That milestone includes both digital-only and print home delivery subscriptions (which feature online access by default).

Ruadhán Mac Cormaic, who has edited The Irish Times for three years and spent 17 years at the title, told Press Gazette said: “It’s important for the organisation. It’s a milestone, it’s not the destination. And there are other milestones we have to hit.

“I don’t want to pretend that… we have the answer to every question. The world is moving too fast to be certain about anything. But it validates and affirms everything we’ve been doing for the last ten years.”

The Irish Times introduced its subscription model in 2015 and Mac Cormaic said it was always the goal that subscriptions would cover the entire cost of the journalism within a decade.

Mac Cormaic added: “I think one of the one of the original sins of the digital age for news publishers was giving it all away for free because you were, in effect, saying to your readers that you didn’t attach much value to what you were doing.

“We think that by putting what we think is a fair price and a reasonable price on our journalism, and asking people to pay for that, we’re saying that we attach value to it – but we can see that they do too.”

The 167-year-old Irish Times is owned by a trust, which was established in 1974 to ensure its editorial and financial independence. Mac Cormaic sits on the board alongside his deputy editor, the chief executive and chief financial officer, and six non-executive directors.

Mac Cormaic said: “We have to make a profit to be sustainable, but when we do, that profit doesn’t have to go back to shareholders. It goes back into the journalism or to the services that support the journalism.”

Mac Cormaic said the success comes down to having ateam motivated by The Irish Times constitution, which “commits us to an approach that’s rigorous, fair minded, humane, it’s a commitment to being open to divergent views, attentive to the needs of minorities”.

The Irish Times Group, which employs about 840 people in total, has made a profit for the last three years following a loss in 2022 due to rising costs amid the end of the Covid-19 pandemic and the start of the war in Ukraine.

Source: Press Gazette