I'm sure the internet has had an effect, Bonnie, but I don't think it's the only reason. A friend of mine has been working on setting up a website to do some of the job of the listings and classified sections of papers like the 'Irish Post' but it's still getting off the ground. Funding has been part of the issue, as well as less interest from businesses than might have been expected. I don't have the link handy or I'd include it.

It is hard, however, for a print newspaper to make money. The circulation of the 'Post' has dropped by nearly half in less than ten years. I suspect that a lot of it is down to the fact that the Irish in Britain are now an established, settled, integrated and in many cases very successful community and many of them aren't that interested in the sort of stories that have been a staple of the paper's copy for many years. Maybe being 'Irish' means something different to second-generation Irish people in Britain by comparison with whatever it may have meant to the people who published the paper. I don't know.

It's a pity, though. Now the only Irish paper left in Britain is the 'Irish World', which for a long time, I thought, was very inferior to the 'Post', though it has got better in recent years - largely because the same people write for both papers.