Gonna subscribe to the first Irish newspaper to get rid of its Op-Ed section.

The hate-click for ads model is dead.

There's no reason to keep the Corens, Quinns etc in place.

Stop antagonising your readers.
It is bad business sense in the long run.

What's the worst that can happen? Coren has to sell a kidney to pay his vintner's bill?

Newspapers ten or fifteen years ago didn’t employ opinion columnists whose job was to antagonise & enrage.

It became a thing fairly recently, for clicks.

It has had a terrible effect on everyone’s lives.

Time to spend the money on actual journalism, not shit-stirring.

I actually got asked to write an opinion piece a while back, based on some opinion I'd shared on here.

I said no, in part because my opinion is about as valuable or as useful as anything available for free on Twitter.

But then so is Coren's, Breda O'Brien's or whoever's.

By the way, I would genuinely welcome any response to this from people in newspapers.

I'm making a purely economic argument - what are the economics of the Op-Ed section?

Is there a genuine reason for it to be indispensable?

(If nothing else this thread is good for finding out which journos have muted me)