Over two days in Dublin this week, the INMA Irish Media Study Tour took 21 members inside six of the country’s most influential media organisations.

From the century-old Irish Times and Irish Independent to the digital-only disruptor Journal Media, and from RTÉ’s sprawling campus to Bauer’s youth-driven audio empire, attendees got a candid look at the pressures, strategies and innovations shaping Irish media in 2025.

What stood out most from the study tour, part of INMA’s Media Innovation Week, was not simply the diversity of business models but the shared determination to reinvent. Across print, radio, television and digital-only formats, leaders repeated the same themes: focus, audience engagement, new revenue streams, and trust.

Here are the key insights that cut across all six tour stops.

Transformation is relentless, but focus is everything

One of the clearest messages came from the Business Post, The Irish Independent, and The Irish Times: Transformation never really ends. All three organisations described long, sometimes painful journeys of digital change.

Executives at The Irish Times, founded in 1859, explained how digital subscriptions now underpin profitability, after years of aligning the whole organisation behind measurable goals — building reach, converting readers, and retaining them.

Belgian Mediahuis' acquisition gave the Irish Independent a clear direction, instantly providing access to modern technology and expertise while integrating the title into a larger, innovation-driven European group. This accelerated learning, cultural change, and digital subscriber growth beyond what the Independent thought was possible on the Irish market. 

The Business Post, meanwhile, leaned into a narrow set of subjects — banking, property, tech, and legal — making strategic bets rather than trying to cover everything.

At the end of the two-day tour, INMA Researcher-in-Residence Greg Piechota’s closing wrap-up underlined this: Media companies cannot scatter resources thinly. The most successful examples globally, he noted, chose six or seven themes to excel at, even if that meant saying no to tempting but distracting projects.

Lesson: Pick battles. Focus limited resources on areas where you can lead — not just participate.

Diversification is no longer optional

Every stop revealed a search for adjacent revenue streams beyond traditional advertising.

• Business Post Group has gone furthest, acquiring the Irish Management Institute and building a profitable conference and training arm. This is not “nice to have.” It is core strategy, enabling the company to monetise authority and networks, not just journalism.
• The Irish Times is experimenting with e-commerce, affiliate revenue, and services for “communities of interest.”
• Mediahuis (Irish Independent) has leaned heavily into podcasts — both news and sport — to reach younger audiences and monetise via sponsorship and video.
• Bauer Media has GoLoud, its aggregator app, digital ad exchange, and a booming podcast/live show ecosystem.

Even RTÉ, constrained as a public broadcaster, is seeking to redevelop land, invest in drama exports, and modernise production facilities.

Lesson: Journalism alone no longer pays the bills. Sustainable media businesses must be platforms — offering training, events, audio, video, and data.

Audio is Ireland’s growth story

If one medium shone through the tour, it was audio:

• Bauer Media has scaled digital audio with precision: podcasts, repackaged radio, and youth formats driving millions of streams. Crucially, Bauer resists bundling digital ads with radio, protecting value in both.
• Irish Independent (Mediahuis) has built the Indo Daily podcast into a flagship product, followed by Indo Sport. Both combine journalistic muscle with production polish, drawing younger audiences and advertisers.
• Newstalk, Bauer’s national talk station, has reinvented itself with “Conversation that counts,” balancing live radio with on-demand digital.

Why does audio thrive here? Ireland’s media market is unusually audio-heavy: Radio accounts for around 12% of ad spend, far above European averages.

Combined with Ireland’s mobile-first audience, audio offers loyalty, intimacy and scale.

Lesson: Audio is not just an add-on. It is a primary growth channel — especially when integrated with live events, social video, and podcasts.

Digital-only publishers face transformation pressures, too

Journal Media, publisher of The Journal, reminded the tour that being digital-only is no easy shortcut. Starting in 2010 without legacy baggage gave them agility, but it also meant brand recognition challenges, low CPMs, and constant pivots.

Their newsroom is remote-first, their monetisation model volume-driven, and their survival dependent on relentless adaptation. They embraced Twitter early, moved fast to mobile, and learned that shiny offices or flashy dashboards do not matter as much as speed and credibility.

Today, the Journal is shifting from an advertising-heavy model to one where readers see the Journal as an indispensable service worth supporting. It aims at lifting consumer revenue up to 30% of the total. The strategy centers on signature content: from its renowned fact-checking unit to award-winning investigative journalism.

Lesson: Digital natives and legacy publishers are converging on the same truth: Sustainability requires focus, innovation, and a willingness to keep pivoting.

Audience habits, not platforms, dictate success

A striking commonality was the insistence on meeting audiences where they are:

• Indo Daily succeeded because 90% of listeners consume it on third-party apps, not the Independent’s own site.
• Bauer protects pricing by respecting how audiences value live radio versus digital streams.
• The Journal used Twitter in its early days not for traffic but for visibility.
• The Irish Times uses metrics like session duration, visit frequency, and newsletter opens to measure habit formation, not just raw reach.

Lesson: Audiences — not legacy workflows — determine distribution. Media brands must be ruthlessly audience-led.

Editorial excellence still matters

For all the talk of diversification, leaders repeatedly stressed that journalism remains the core product.

At the Business Post, executives described the deliberate editorial shift to focus on business and politics with unmatched authority.

The Irish Times doubled down on “journalism worth paying for” as the foundation of subscription growth.

Mediahuis emphasised storytelling and scandal as the hooks that keep podcast listeners engaged.

Even Bauer, primarily an audio business, relies on signature voices like Pat Kenny to anchor trust and draw loyal audiences.

Lesson: Diversification may fund the newsroom, but distinctive journalism sustains the brand.

Culture and people are the hardest part

Technology is relatively easy. Transforming culture is harder.

The Irish Times admitted its early digital operations were a challenging activity bolted onto the newsroom. It took years to integrate digital into the core.

Journal Media shared the messy reality of hybrid working and constant reorganisation. RTÉ described the loss of internal trust as one of its biggest challenges.

Greg Piechota’s final wrap reminded participants that tools like AI can reshape workflows, but without cultural buy-in, progress stalls.

Lesson: Media transformation is as much about people, leadership, and values as about products and platforms.

Ireland as a case study for global media

Why does Ireland matter in a global context?

As Piechota’s opening briefing pointed out, it is a small but highly digitised market: 94% of households have Internet, two-thirds of ad spend is digital, and yet public broadcasters and newspapers retain significant reach.

It is also a test bed for platform power. Meta and Google command about 80% of digital ad revenue.

Irish publishers, therefore, illustrate both the risks of dependency and the opportunities of building direct relationships with audiences through subscriptions, podcasts, and events.

Conclusion: reinvention without end

The INMA Irish Media Study Tour revealed an industry at once fragile and inventive. Each organisation is grappling with the same forces — declining print, platform dominance, shifting habits — but each is also carving out distinct strategies.

What unites them is a willingness to change deliberately. Whether through audio, subscriptions, training, or drama exports, Irish media leaders are refusing to cling to the past. Yet they also insist that editorial quality and trust cannot be sacrificed on the altar of diversification.

The clearest lesson for global publishers is this: Reinvention is not a project; it is a permanent state of being. The Irish case shows that if you align around focus, trust, and audience, it is possible not only to survive but to thrive.

Editor’s note: This article summarises, with the assistance of ChatGPT, original content created by our hosts and INMA as curators of the tour. All content has been reviewed and edited by INMA editors.

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