‘Most Read’ stories in (from top to bottom) the Irish Times, the Belfast Telegraph and The Times (London) on the evening of Ian Paisley’s death, 12 September 2014. Jon Ronson’s reflections on Paisley as preacher, ‘Time to work up a good pulpit sweat’, mean that the ‘Big Man’ accounts for four of the five most-read stories in the Irish Times this evening. No surprise that he should attract more attention in Dublin than in London (just one in five) but the apparent disparity in levels of interest between readers of the Irish Times and the Belfast Telegraph (one in five as well) is a little more curious. Maybe it reflects Ian Paisley’s late-in-life role as champion of a compromise peace settlement which is now the focus of simmering discontent on the unionist right. The fact that ‘Cameron and Blair’ are referenced in the Telegraph‘s headline about Ian Paisley provides a subtle indicator of the importance attached by the paper to validation from the metropolis.
