Good points John, I really enjoyed your take on things, being meaning to link to it here in the interim period http://blog.whoisireland.com/index.php?p=83

If you look at the way some of the broadsheets are covering tech news, it is a far cry from the dot.bomb days. The Irish Times’ coverage has shrunk back to a few personality journalism OpEds, a product pimping section (more politely referred to as a product review section) and scattered bits of token news. Every now and then there is feature article on something. But as a news source or even an opinion shaper, it is a shadow of its former self. I think some of the big US newspapers cut back on their tech sections significantly and the IT has always aped them in coverage.

Perhaps as long as the Irish newspapers can sell adverts, they’ll continue their dedicated tech sections. But there is a major shift in the demographics in that a lot of the younger demographic do not read newspapers or rely on newspapers for their news. Tech news has gone online and the print media is finding it very difficult to compete with the web when it comes to relevancy and time.

I think that the crunch that John Collins pointed out (where technology journalists are making the jump to PR) is something that has been a long time coming. If you look for an Irish tech news site now, are you going to find one or are you going to find a site that really just runs press releases as news? Good tech journalism is expensive and it is hard work. There is always going to be a level of attrition as technology journalists are absorbed by the PR industry. The difference this time, perhaps is the number and the high profile of those absorbed. Maybe there is an exploitable niche for a good Irish tech news site or blog. If the rate of technology journalist attrition keeps up, it would have a wealth of press releases to recycle.