The Irish Star is launching a new online offering targeted at the Irish American market. The new digital offering, IrishStar.com marks a significant departure for the print-only title which is published by Reach.
The site will cater to a sizeable Irish American audience individual correspondents covering New York City, Boston and Pennsylvania. Recruitment has already begun across reporting, social media, multimedia and editor roles, for jobs to start in the new year. Current staff are also invited to apply for roles and overseas secondments. Reach will begin hiring journalists already based in the U.S. in the coming months and is planning to secure a New York office.
According to Joanne McGreevy, Reach plc marketplace publisher for Ireland: “Planning for digital growth and expansion of the Irish Star has been a focus for Reach Ireland since we acquired the business in December 2020 and we are excited by the audience opportunity that this represents both at home and in the US.”
As part of its expansion into the US, Reach also announced that it would launch a dedicated operation there with particular focus on growing its audience for the Mirror, Express as well as the IrishStar.com. Reach will also bolster its 24-7 sports coverage to more closely serve U.S. based soccer fans, especially for the Manchester Evening News, FootballLondon and Liverpool.com which covers Liverpool FC.
The expansion has been led by group editor-in-chief Lloyd Embley and chief digital publisher David Higgerson.
“The experience and data we’ve gathered over recent years, both on our existing national titles and from launching dozens of Newsbrands from scratch, will ensure we are in a strong position to take advantage of this opportunity to reach millions more readers every day,” says Embley.
