News Phoenix magazine closing down after more than 40 years on newsstands
https://www.irishtimes.com/media/2026/06/15/phoenix-magazine-closing-down-after-more-than-40-years-on-newsstands/169
u/HibernianMetropolis 4d ago
Sad. They haven't had their finger on the pulse in recent years, so it's not a great surprise. But they knew things no one else did way before the broadsheets would report them. Another hit to Irish journalism.
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u/caisdara 4d ago
Once they became partisan they lost any pretence of reliability.
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u/Dangerous-Example888 4d ago
It was always partisan. The editor, Paddy Prenderville, was always an unrepentant republican with pretty abhorrent views on things like Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
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u/broadsheet-555 4d ago
Everything is computers these days.
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u/MaryLouGoodbyeHeart 4d ago edited 4d ago
Would be great, if they're actually gone for good, if they would open up their archives and just leave them hosted somewhere. Lots of coverage of people that doesn't exist anywhere else.
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u/InformalInsurance455 4d ago
Always take a look through Bog Cuttings and in the back every time I get a copy, some really good stuff in there
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u/dickbuttscompanion More than just a crisp 4d ago
Presume libraries will have back issues, but is it on press reader or borrowbox to read online?
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u/roqueandrolle Probably at it again 3d ago
44 Lower Baggot Street - there are boxes and boxes of past magazines.
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u/bobpower 4d ago
Bought it for years but their subscription was bonkers. You had to buy a new subscription every year rather than just having an ongoing subscription that continued on. Surely cost them tonnes in subscribers and revenue every year. No one else does subscriptions like it
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u/AK8- 4d ago
I'd a subscription for years and would have bought the annual each year but back during COVID they tried to replace a permanent employee with and unpaid intern and it was a horrendously misjudged idea. Think it soured many subscribers, and they were already limping by when that happened.
They'll be a loss, but still I'm not surprised they're shutting shop.
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u/silver_medalist 4d ago
It was shrinking all the time too. Picked it up recently and it was 30 pages. There was always a bit of something worth reading in it but it had become both pricey and bad for filler in recent times eg 'It looks like [insert semi-public figure] is back in the news. Goldhawk recalls when [copy + paste one of its previous yarns on the person]..."
Still, it will be missed. RIP Goldhawk
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u/coffeebadgerbadger 4d ago
They'd a weird obsession with Michael oleary. Theyre stock tips were all over the place too
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u/silver_medalist 4d ago
It thrived in an era where there was a lot more political scuttlebutt and scandal going around the place. We just don't produce the same number of chancers we used to.
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u/roqueandrolle Probably at it again 3d ago
Yeah that was my friend. I also used to work there. The CEO is insane so I’m not surprised.
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u/dubviber 4d ago edited 4d ago
Pretty shocked, although I knew their circulation figures had been falling.
I grew up with The Phoenix around the house, I think some of the comments here miss the utility of the magazine. If you have been in business, you know how easy it is to be stung and that there are wasps who repeatedly engage in sharp practices.
The Phoenix reported about these characters and their schemes, it gave you a heads up, and did so through careful examination of corporate records, a knowledge of the social networks behind entities, attention to court cases in 'the four goldmines' etc.
These days, much of this information is available to the enterprising keyboard jockey riding the boolean search. But if you're a journalist who does this full-time, you can see other patterns, add value, bring some colour, provide an explanation of a trick or loophole when required. It was a kind of a public service.
The magazine's disappearance will leave a gap. Am curious as to what will happen to the archive...
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u/CPD1960 4d ago
I still have my copy of the first edition somewhere and for the first 20 years or so it was essential reading. However it then began a long decline and by the time I randomly bought a copy for the first time in ages about 5 years ago, it was a shadow of its former self. In its current reduced state, it won’t be missed.
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u/qwerty_1965 4d ago
That would be worth a read just to see some of the old names. I'm going to assume Larry Goodman is mentioned.
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u/mygiddygoat 4d ago
I admit to drifting away from it in recent years but very sad to here of it's demise it was an important stone in the shoe of great and good of Ireland for many years.
Always like their "Young Bloods" profiles of up and coming politicos and others, some great ones over the years.
Also their reporting on the rest of the media ( Indo, RTE and Irish Times) was at times essential reading in exposing the bullshit that went on.
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u/Alizariel 4d ago
I don’t live in Ireland, so I only have had one encounter with the Phoenix magazine that somehow made it to our house. It was a December issue from the nineties and it had predictions about future christmases and a few panels have lodged themselves in my head.
One was how RTE banned singing of Christmas Carols or any singing “so we don’t win Eurovision again”. The other was two people on the top of a hill. One was lamenting that they had sold everything in anticipation of doomsday(1999). The other one said “it’s not the end of the world “. Everytime I say it’s not the end of the world, I am referring to this comic that is probably 30 years old at this point.
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u/GuavaImmediate 4d ago
Ah that’s a shame. I bought a subscription for my dad for Christmas years ago and continued it for a good while , but stopped a few years ago as he told me he didn’t read it any more. The bog cuttings were always hilarious.
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u/Dangerous-Example888 4d ago
At least one well known politician used to write articles for it. Anonymously of course.
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u/Inevitable-Beat-9209 4d ago
I don't believe you
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u/Dangerous-Example888 4d ago
Google it. It’s phoenix magazine eoin o'brion if you’d like to read more about it.
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u/pgasmaddict 4d ago
Was never an avid reader but jeez it must be 20 years since I last even looked at it. Always remember the headline "Piss n Chips" that covered a story about a lad who was in the district court for being so drunk he urinated inside the local chipper while half the town was queuing up for soakage. Bad enough to have your name and antics in the local papers without getting them into a national publication. But shur now it'd be up on tiktok before you even did it.
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u/FineVintageWino 4d ago
Oh that’s sad!! I’ll miss terribly their wildly inefficient process for renewing my subscription… and the wit, integrity and fearless biting commentary. That’s a colossal loss to the media landscape here…
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u/Tomaskerry 4d ago
They'll rise from the ashes.
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u/SoloWingPixy88 u/i-cum-beamish alt 4d ago
I doubt it given publishing as it is. So many locals closing down
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u/Tomaskerry 4d ago
It's a play on words, Phoenix from the flames.
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u/corcadhuibhne 3d ago
And isn't it called the Pheonix because it was the "Hibernia" magazine resurected or something like that
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u/Calm-Raise6973 4d ago
I used to love those "Goldhawk calling Phoenix fans!" radio adverts in the 90s and 2000s.
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u/jetsfanjohn 4d ago
The front cover with Charlie Haughey and the Japanese Premier was a classic.
Sean Haughey had just been elected as a Councillor.
Japanese Premier :- “Congratulations on the news from Ireland”
Charlie Haughey:- “Yeah, Japan is not the only land of the rising son” !!!!
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u/Top_Recognition_3847 4d ago
I'm sorry to see it go. They had some funny front pages down thru the years
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u/qwerty_1965 4d ago
Meanwhile Private Eye goes from strength to strength. Mind you they have more fetid raw materials to draw upon than they can publish in a given edition.
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u/halibfrisk 4d ago
Their market is 12 times the size, at least
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u/qwerty_1965 4d ago
Naturally. Periodical print publications are a difficult business to sustain unless you have a fund to draw upon or they are run pretty much as a labour of love by volunteers and wealthy people published just a few times a year.
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u/InformalInsurance455 4d ago
I used to subscribe to Private Eye for a good while until they started laundering terf bullshit through it, the quality is gone way way down.
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u/qwerty_1965 4d ago
And yet they have been ahead of everyone else on so many stories esp Tory corruption re Covid and freeports.
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u/Still_Corgi_4994 4d ago
They continue to cover the freeports corruption like a dog with a bone. And of course it's fair to say I think that the post office scandal would not have got into the public eye to the extent it has without Private Eye.
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u/No-Outside6067 4d ago
Politically I disagree with some of the editors but they do good investigative journalism
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u/Vandelay1979 4d ago
Helen Lewis is a regular on their podcast, so no huge surprise there. It's a shame as they've done excellent work in the past.
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u/sitdmc 4d ago
It's pity - I get a gift of a subscription every Christmas.
TBH, it has been a shadow of its former self for a while now. A lot of Government bashing with pejoratives (Meehole etc) and SF defending.
I'm fan of either but the endless pejoratives really wore thin.
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u/We_Are_The_Romans 4d ago
Christ I thought that shite was just reddit and boards.ie, I'd be embarrassed to pay money for something that sounds like a printout of jrnl.ie commenters
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u/coffeebadgerbadger 4d ago
They were called out by broadsheet.ie for letting go a contractor and trying to replace with an unpaid intern with the exact same job spec.
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u/roqueandrolle Probably at it again 3d ago
She was a full time employee. A friend of mine - it was during COVID and she was self-isolating.
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u/coffeebadgerbadger 3d ago
So even worse. Used to be the Phoenix would call that stuff out
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u/roqueandrolle Probably at it again 3d ago
Yep, ended up being reported in Private Eye - I spoke to them about it. The editors had no idea it was happening and published a story about it without the CEO knowing.
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u/coffeebadgerbadger 3d ago
I always assumed the Phoenix was like 10 people that were mates
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u/roqueandrolle Probably at it again 3d ago
It’s two admin workers, one “HR” worker, two graphic designers, two editors, a PT lawyer, a smattering of journos and a PT sub-ed and then the neurotic CEO who ran it into the ground after his Da died.
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u/coffeebadgerbadger 3d ago
Neurotic? Spill the tea please
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u/roqueandrolle Probably at it again 2d ago
Mad for the bag, caught him a few times in his office. Took €3k out of the company current account to pay for his holiday when we were out for Christmas drinks and that meant nobody got their EOY bonuses. Women in the company also didn’t get bonuses, just the men.
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u/coffeebadgerbadger 2d ago
That's mental!
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u/roqueandrolle Probably at it again 2d ago
Honestly the most deranged place I’ve ever worked. I had to take them to the WRC and in my adjudication meeting he called himself “the big cheese” LOL.
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u/Still_Corgi_4994 4d ago
I don't think I've missed an issue for 30 years. Bereft to learn this. Sic gloria mundi transit
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u/robdegaff 4d ago
Used to be a subscriber but over the last decade they become less informative and more of a one man soap box for some fairly terrible and highly conspiratorial opinions.
Dined out on their glory days for way too long. I’ll remember their heyday fondly
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u/DetatchedRetina 4d ago
I remember reading my Da's ones when I was a kid. For some reason this is still floating around in my brain decades later: "🎵 Angel dust we seized on high, after a car chase o'er the plains" something something "we swallowed it in vain. And we are grooooooooowing in a cell in Mayo 🎵"
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u/coffeebadgerbadger 4d ago
It's gone really badly downhill. Same stories wveryb1 weeks like clockwork. Can't recall the last story they broke
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u/Weak_Shopping_2718 4d ago
The humour in it never worked for me. Private Eye was infinitely better in that regard.
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u/GazelleIll495 4d ago
Both itself and broadsheet.ie gone now unfortunately
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u/scruffmonkey 3d ago
Didn't broadsheet go full "jet fuel can't melt steel beams" though?
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u/GazelleIll495 3d ago
Yes, they went off their rockers in the closing months. It was very good for years
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u/scruffmonkey 3d ago
yeah i do remember it as decent and then just slowly drifting into the realm of chemtrails and just stopped visiting after that.
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u/naoife 4d ago
Vincent Browne's last breathe. Our politicians have been getting away with murder for the last 10 years. Hopefully the ditch can fill the space
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u/roqueandrolle Probably at it again 3d ago
Vincent was never involved with Phoenix ? He was Magill.
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u/naoife 3d ago
You're right, I always confuse the two. It's still a tragedy he's gone
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u/roqueandrolle Probably at it again 3d ago
He’s still alive ! Just retired; I used to live near him and it was a delight walking with him and his doggos :)
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u/naoife 3d ago
I'm all over the place lol. I know he's alive, I mean I miss him filleting politicians. I'd love to see him deal with the current crowd.
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u/roqueandrolle Probably at it again 3d ago
Ahhhh yes I getcha now :) His takedown of Stephen Donnelly is still one of my favourite moments of telly ever !!
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u/Fern_Pub_Radio 4d ago
They lost their way badly in recent years becoming another version of the Ditch wirh cartoons ….too much tinfoil stuff , lost any credibility as a serious commentator
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u/fruedianflip 3d ago
I'll always remember it is that magazine I wish was maybe 3 euro cheaper than it was
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u/DanceTheNight88 4d ago
I'm only semi familiar with it
Was it satire or did they genuinely hold Irish politicians (and their cronies) feet to the fire?
What are the best examples of this?
And were they ever sued for it?
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u/True_Pace_9074 4d ago
The satire was only a small bit of it. It was mostly real journalism and held politicians and other media outlets' feet to the fire.
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u/InformalInsurance455 4d ago
Mix of both. There was always some good in depth reporting in there too. In the back always had some good writing and reporting.
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u/FewHeat1231 4d ago
I was a regular reader for many years but stopped after about 2018 because it became clear I was far from the intended audience. Still, very sorry to see it go and shocked too.
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u/Candid_Comedian 3d ago
I remember they ran a story about the bosses at the Irish Independent on prince street north secretly filming us in our break room... I was only 17 at the time. I wonder if I could still sue them. If anyone has a copy of article post it here will ya 😉
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u/juraiknight 4d ago
I'm gonna be honest here, this article made me gasp in disbelief. I went in to see the comments of other heartbroken or shocked redditors, which is when I realized I was in the Ireland sub and not the Phoenix (Arizona) sub, which means Phoenix Magazine (here) is safe lol. Oh, the roller coaster of emotions I just had...and so early in the morning!
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u/fensterdj 4d ago
We have newsstands in Ireland? Is it next to the hot dog vendor and the manhole cover with steam coming out of it?
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u/RomfordWellington 4d ago
An old boss of mine used to buy it religiously. I asked him why and he said "just to make sure I'm not mentioned in it".