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New Irish-American website launches
By Noreen Bowden | March 18, 2009
The publisher of New York’s Irish Voice newspaper and Irish-America magazine has launched a new website aimed at the diaspora.
The New York Times says of the venture, www.IrishCentral.com: “The new site includes genealogy information, top tourist spots in Ireland, breaking news and breaking fluff. Its target audience is the Irish diaspora, which numbers 36.5 million in the United States, more than eight times the population of Ireland.”
While the site claims to be the first global Irish website, there is little ground for the assertion. Numerous other other sites such as irishabroad.com, emigrant.ie, seventymillion.org and the now-defunct virtualireland.com and local.ie have also been aimed at the global Irish community. (I worked on two of these: virtualireland.com and emigrant.ie.)
Publisher Niall O’Dowd has gathered $2.4 million in investments and advertising commitments. Backers of the site include a number of prominent Irish-American business executives.
O’Dowd has been a prominent spokesperson in Irish-American affairs, and was the organiser of the first US-Ireland Forum held in New York in November 2007. He recently stepped down as chair of the Irish Lobby for Immigration Reform.
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