The Irish Independent
 |
|
| Type | Daily newspaper |
|---|---|
| Format | compact |
| Owner(s) | Independent News & Media |
| Editor | Fionnan Sheahan |
| Founded | January 1905 (replaced Daily Irish Independent) |
| Political alignment |
Populist Conservative |
| Headquarters | Talbot Street, Dublin, Ireland |
| ISSN | 0021-1222 |
| Website | www.independent.ie |
The Irish Independent is Ireland's largest-selling daily newspaper, published by Independent News & Media (INM). It often includes glossy magazines. While most of the paper's content in English, it also publishes a weekly supplement in Irish called Seachtain. ("Seachtain" is the Irish word for "week".)
The Irish Independent's sister publication is the Sunday Independent. The Irish Independent is available on the Irish Newspaper Archives website up to 2004 you will only find "Black-And-White" microfilm pages but since 2005 the pages of the Irish Independent online in colour.
Since May 2012, the Irish Independent has been controlled by billionaire Denis O'Brien since he acquired 29.9% of the paper's parent company. In January 2008, at the same time as completing the purchase Today FM (Ireland's last national radio station independent of O'Brien and state broadcaster RTÉ), O'Brien increased his INM shareholding to become that company's second-biggest shareholder behind Tony O'Reilly, whom he ousted just over four years later. Traditionally a broadsheet newspaper, it introduced an additional compact size in 2004 and in December 2012 (following O'Brien's takeover) it was announced that the newspaper would become compact only.
The Irish Independent was formed in 1905 as the direct successor to the Daily Irish Independent, an 1890s pro-Parnellite newspaper, and was launched by William Martin Murphy, a controversial Irish nationalist businessman, staunch anti-Parnellite and fellow townsman of Parnell's most venomous opponent, Bantry's Timothy Michael Healy.
During the 1913 Lockout of workers, in which Murphy was the leading figure among the employers, the Irish Independent vigorously sided with its owner's interests, publishing news reports and opinion pieces hostile to the strikers, expressing confidence in the unions' defeat and launching personal attacks on the leader of the strikers, James Larkin. The Irish Independent described the 1916 Easter Rising as "insane and criminal" and famously called for the shooting of its leaders. In December 1919, during the Irish War of Independence, a group of twenty IRA men destroyed the printing works of the paper, angered at its criticism of the Irish Republican Army's attacks on members of the Dublin Metropolitan Police and British government officials. In 1924, the traditional nationalist newspaper, the Freeman's Journal, merged with the Irish Independent. Until October 1986 the paper's masthead over the editorial contained the words "incorporating the Freeman's Journal".
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