Irish Overseas Property Journalists
Considering the amount of Irish people who invested in Overseas Property over the past decade, you’d imagine that there would be a strong and thriving place for Irish Overseas Irish Property Journalists in the Irish media, but you’d be wrong. In fact, not wishing to blow my own trumpet but blowing it anyway, I’m the only one I’m aware of – and I don’t write for any Irish newspaper – which is a blessing in disguise, as I’ll outline later.
The fact of the matter is that if you are an overseas property company with a project that you would like to have featured in an Irish Property Section (there are no Overseas Sections in Ireland despite the fact that the Irish are buying far more property abroad than in the decrepit Irish market at this point in time) you will approach an Irish newspaper with your story. If they even agree to do the piece they will pick a member of staff to visit or meet with you, see the area and property and then draft an article. The problem is no Irish property supplement these days has more than two permanent staff and they are up to their necks working to fill what pages are left in Irish Property Supplements these days.
The permanent staff of an Irish Property Supplement may be depended on to have some, although usually very limited, knowledge of the Overseas Property Market as it relates to Irish buyers. Unfortunately, you will be very lucky to get one of these because, of late, they will be expected to take the time from their holiday allowance. Not ideal at all. Therefore you will be assigned a subbie or other member of staff in need of a holiday. In some cases I’ve seen myself, they can’t even write properly. In one publication for which I worked the print layout guy, who had rarely been outside of Ireland and had never written an article on anything in his life, was sent on a trip to an African country to report on its burgeoning property industry. To say he hadn’t a clue what he was doing would be to put it very mildly. On arrival he announced to the promoter that he was ‘on holiday’ and was not to be disturbed by too much in the line of work. The ensuing article was so poor it was laughable, unless you’d paid to cart his useless carcass to the development in question.
In truth, unlike the UK, the Irish media has never really committed to Overseas Property to the level it has deserved. Everything is based on advertising. If there is a lot of Overseas Property advertising then you will see a swathe of Irish Overseas Property Journalists conjured up from staff or freelancers, if there is no overseas property advertising you’ll see no Overseas Property coverage. So it is today. There is no advertising, so there is no coverage.
In all honesty, it’s irrelevant to someone trying to get themselves noticed in the Irish market at this stage in any case. There is so little overseas property featuring in the Irish media at this stage that anybody remotely interested in the subject has now gone online for their information. The Irish media has, in typically calamitous style, largely missed the online revolution and their offerings where it really matters, their online editions, are just not up to international best practice standards. If you have a project feature in the Sunday Business Post, for instance, they’ll hide it behind a paywall so that hardly anyone can see it. In a market the size of Ireland this is simply ludicrous. (I should point out that I used to write for the Business Post and regard it highly as a newspaper, some of its business decisions are, however, questionable at best). The Business Post used to be Ireland’s most high profile newspaper for overseas property information and editorial, now people can’t even get to see your article online unless they pay through the nose for it.
Irish Overseas Irish Property Journalists – Read All About it Here
To expand on the point I made earlier about the ‘blessing in disguise’ nature of my lack of activity relating to the Irish print media these days. When I found myself out of a job at something I’ve pretty much done all my working life since 1995, I didn’t have many choices. I had seen the writing on the wall prior to the bust and knew that a time would come when newspapers would contract and Overseas Property would become a mere indulgence that couldn’t be entertained. I had, therefore, set up this website well in advance of the termination of my services to mainstream media. This was, it would turn out, a wise decision and the aforementioned blessing in disguise.
This website, along with the business I’ve generated from it since its inception, has been my saving grace. It also means that Irish people with an interest in the Overseas Property Industry and how it impinges on them, many of whom have invested overseas, still have a source to inform them. Heaven forbid they should have to depend on the Irish Mainstream Media for this.
The upshot is that, because there is no coverage of Overseas Property anywhere else in Ireland, I pretty much have the market to myself. This is why the site has had almost 25,000 pageviews over the past months, and this figure is rising quickly. If you’ve found the site you’ll know that it shows up very prominently and visibly for a wide range of Overseas Property topics, making it by far the best read property blog in Ireland. I also have complete editorial control. This is a big issue at a time when cheap subbies are, on a regular basis, reducing Irish newspapers to farcical rubbish.
If you need an Irish Overseas Property Journalist with experience that knows what he is doing, drop me a line on info@diarmaidcondon.com. and we’ll see where it goes from there.
