According to The Sunday Tribune (and via Greenslade), The Irish Times Ltd. has merged its print and internet news rooms in recent weeks, as part of a move towards becoming Ireland’s first 24-hour newsroom.
Ireland.com had previously been operated by a subsidiary of The Irish Times Ltd. called Itronics Ltd, but will now integrate with the main newspaper’s editorial team.
The Irish Times has long been one of the more notable players in the Irish online news arena, ignoring the pay-wall, and it’s an interesting but inevitable (and logical) development for them to merge operations with a view to becoming a ’round-the-clock player.
Surely other operators in the media will be paying attention to the move but won’t want to be left too far behind either, so expect this to be mimicked sooner rather than later. The big question, however, is whether RTÉ will see fit to do likewise with their online news operations, which are currently completely independent of the rest of RTÉ News.