According to the latest figures released by the Conamara-based Tuairisc Bheo Teoranta, the website has been visted over 380,000 times by almost 135,000 unique users since its establishment last October.
Funded by Foras na Gaeilge to provide news, analysis and entertainment for Irish speakers, Tuairisc.ie, originally envisaged as a “weekly online newspaper”, has managed to provide a daily service for its users over the past eight months.
The website, which employs five full-time staff in Bearna, Co Galway, features a mix of national and international affairs, with an emphasis on stories relevant to Irish-language speakers but ignored in most other media. Regular contributors include Morning Ireland's Cathal Mac Coille and former Kerry All-Ireland winning captain Dara Ó Cinnéide.
Tuairisc.ie Editor, Mr Seán Tadhg Ó Gairbhí, described the level of traffic on the site as “hugely encouraging. For a news service operating exclusively in a minority language that has traditionally struggled in the readership stakes, the figures so far are very healthy. There are a lot more people reading in Irish every day than was the case before Tuairisc.ie went live and, for us, that’s the best measure of success.
“Almost 70 per cent of the 135,000 people who have visted the site since the end of last year are return vistitors and that loyalty is important as it indicates that our specific audience is satisfied with what we are doing. Most recently, our referendum coverage and our coverage of a new study on the language crisis in the Gaeltacht proved particularly popular among readers.”
The most read story on Tuairisc.ie since its foundation was an exclusive report on how the Irish language was used to publish pornography on YouTube without attracting the attention of the video sharing the website’s moderators.
Ó Gairbhí said that Tuairisc.ie hoped to grow its readership steadily over the duration of its four-year contract: “We will be launching an app and making further developments to the site over the coming months. We also hope to build on our education section to ensure that Tuairisc.ie reaches the classroom and the next generation of readers in the Irish language.”
