Opinion: With a total of five morning papers in at least notional competition, Belfast's media world is enjoying trashing new kids on the block and their pitch against the oldies.
Newsagents' shelves are a sight to see. Squeezed in among the established British and Irish dailies are the Daily Ireland, born two months ago, the Daily View, out this week, and a morning compact edition of the broadsheet evening Belfast Telegraph launched ahead of schedule to spoil the Daily View's big moment. The Telegraph's morning baby came free on the View's first day - the View retaliated with a coupon entitling the bearer to a free bottle of wine.
The new papers join a freshly compacted version of the 19th-century Irish News and the even more ancient though tabloid-form Newsletter, long-declining and now apparently having a public identity crisis as its owners produce the Daily View. A thin "Belfast" edition of the Newsletter sits alongside the elderly original. While the Irish News and Daily Ireland compete as nationalist voices, Newsletter and Telegraph as forms of unionism, the View's editor promises it will be "politics-free". Genius or wacky, onlookers ask, in a week that Tony Blair delays announcing the election date because of the Pope's death.
But it made a unique front page. "A New View for a New Belfast", the masthead promised, but even bigger print headed the page with "Join in the Historic Launch Edition with a free bottle of wine for every reader". Then the page split. One side had a blurry photo of the Pope lying in state alongside his 1979 message to Northern parents: "Teach your children to forgive." To the left ran the View's mission statement as supplement elevated to newspaper: "Our Great New Local Lifestyle Supplement - Everything you need to know about Diets - Screening for breast cancer at 40 - Child Care: the true cost in our Belfast survey - Eamonn Holmes: "Why did people turn on me?" Daily Ireland was born into a similar clash between ambition and actuality.
Created to give republicanism a voice in mainstream print, it coincided with the breakdown of talks, the Northern Bank robbery, the murder of Robert McCartney, Garda anti-money-laundering operations. Early unapologetic proclamations were succeeded by fairly tortured editorials. Daily Ireland's publisher, Mairtín Ó Muilleoir, declared editorial independence, then the deft and subtle Sinn Féin TD Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin canvassed potential investors.
The often stodgy Irish News rose to the challenge with sharper layout and new columns, after an initial period of bad-tempered grousing about the government subsidies won by Daily Ireland's parent company. One insider thinks their massive new Irish News press might try to undercut the Tele's printing prices: "Maybe they'll end up printing the Newsletter?"
The counter view is that the Telegraph's state-of-the-art press will grab any jobs going. Both communal contests spark harsh judgments: "Daily Ireland's photographic reproduction is terrible . . . the Daily View's not a paper at all, but it means the Newsletter is terminal." Daily Ireland can't cover the Belfast-Dublin corridor, rumour has it, let alone sell Ireland-wide. The deep pockets and starry salesmanship of Tony O'Reilly are bound to see off the View and perhaps the Newsletter as well. But there is puzzlement over the Tele's gambit of five editions a day.
Editor Ed Curran announced that the morning edition would give people a choice, since the paper had a reputation as serving both communities: "We have that kind of ethos about us."
Those who see the Telegraph as unconsciously unionist to its marrow mutter that it took forever to cover GAA and still buries the stories. The new morning's front page on the Pope's death was almost comically cack-handed, big black headline beside the lying-in-state photo assuring readers that "Charles's wedding will go on". Clearly subs and editors sensed incipient reader anxiety. The story's first line read: "The death of Pope John Paul II will not affect the wedding plans of Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles, Clarence House confirmed last night."
Unexpectedly, events having conspired, it has been a splendidly busy news period. What happens after the election? Campaigns, voting and the ramifications if Ulster unionism and the SDLP slip quietly down the plughole and the DUP and Sinn Féin stand out in unrelieved dominance will absorb many, for a time.
Some might be intrigued for longer by the sight of competitors striving to quantify present-day nationalism, the spectacle of once unquestioningly unionist organs chasing the elusive spirit of cross-community concerns.
But the market will judge, and the horrid truth is that local newspaper readers are a tiny band compared to fans of Star, Sun and Mirror. As elsewhere, the majority in Northern Ireland doesn't read papers. Which seems as apt a place as any, if not an uplifting thought, on which to wind up a column.