Irelandr

The Blob's Waterford Correspondent - and a communicator in his own right - alerted me to the midMay edition of Ireland's Own which bills itself as "Ireland's Favourite Family Magazine" but is rarely read by anyone younger than 60. But what do I know? We don't even buy the local paper - that's how blow-in and out of touch we are. The reason why I should buy a copy of IO-IFFM is apparent from this pic of the front page

I paused in the local Supervalu and discovered that it's quite difficult to purchase Ireland's Own because if gets lost in a wide array of dead-tree publications in colour. I wasn't about to do a consumer report on Irish magazines, so I don't know the titles, or the pitch, or the audience of these other pubs. But there were A Lot. I do remember being in Eason's Newsagents+ in Dublin 30 years ago and reflecting that there were regular publications catering for every imaginable niche interest: angling, beauty, cars, dancing, early music, food, gardening. The digital revolution will have done for many of these as advertisers fell away. But Ireland's Own is still going, perhaps because it's general interest is never short of copy.

Turns out there is data supporting my pensionable readership hypothesis on the inside back cover where there is a section called "Penfriends". Here lonely or bereaved readers can put a Free! small Ad, hoping to pull. The sex-ratio is exactly 50F:50M because the calls to ♥ are edited MFMFMFMF interleaved.  The men (ave. = 66) are slightly older than the women (ave. = 63½]. Nobody is looking for BLT. Nobody is looking for VGSOH; being content with GSOH. Nobody in this cohort is looking for CW (they must all be dead, now?) but one requires OHAC (own house and car): but really what's not to love about going on a date on the free travel for Olds?