The Phoenix is Dead

Social media killed it.

It has come to this. After forty-three years of sly, scabrous fortnightly dispatches, those smudged, ink-stained missives from the underbelly of Irish power, half Private Eye, half something older and more venomous, not very intellectual, the Irish politics and finance Phoenix Magazine is closing. No more issues. Voluntary liquidation, they say. The printers will fall silent, the newsagents’ shelves will yawn a little wider, and somewhere in a small circle of political and business readers will feel the peculiar ache of something irreplaceable slipping into the archives of Irish history. Paddy Prendeville’s sharp tongue has been silenced at last, much to the relief of a much older generation who remembers the gossip peddled and the damage done by that gossip. The beast that gorged on politicians’ and other sacred cows’ secrets and spat them back in cartoon form is finally, mercifully retired. They had embarrassed themselves too often in recent years. It was time for The Phoenix to go,…