Irish Daily Star

The Irish Daily Star (formerly known simply as The Star) is a tabloid newspaper published in Ireland by the Independent Star Limited, a joint venture between Northern & Shell, which owns the British Daily Star, and Independent News & Media.
The Irish Daily Star became known for its comprehensive in-depth coverage of and thorough focus on crime, often featuring sensational coverage. It also focuses heavily on celebrity matters, and has a large sports section. Between 2003 and 2011, a Sunday edition was published, as Irish Daily Star Sunday. Like its British tabloid newspaper, the Irish Daily Star has a red-top mast head.
Michael O'Kane took over from Gerard Colleran as editor of the Irish Daily Star on 25 November 2011. Gerard Colleran then became Managing Director of the tabloid.

History

First published on 29 February 1988, nominally the paper was the Irish version of the UK tabloid Daily Star. It did, however, contain more Irish content than any similar Irish editions of the UK national newspapers. The tabloid had strong nationalist leanings, claiming on its slogan to be "Better... because we're Irish".
However, while the Daily Star focuses almost exclusively on celebrity content, the Irish Star includes coverage of Irish issues. In this sense, it has more in common with the Daily Mail and General Trust "Celtified" title, Ireland on Sunday than The Irish Sun (linked with The Sun of the UK), despite the strong visual similarities between the two.
In Northern Ireland, The Irish Star features a green masthead, in order to distinguish it from the UK version which is also sold there. It also differs from the Irish Daily Star in that it features more news about Northern Ireland.
The newspaper's offices were located in Terenure, Dublin 6W, until November 2010. They then relocated to Building 4 of the Dundrum Town Centre complex. The Star employs 70 staff directly.The controlling editor of the paper for many years was Ger Colleran, who often appears on television programmes such as Tonight with Vincent Browne.
According to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, Ireland, the average daily circulation of the Irish Daily Star was down to 75,293 for the period January to June 2012. This represented a fall in circulation of 14% on a year-on-year basis.

Kate Middleton photographs

The Irish Daily Star published controversial topless pictures of Kate Middleton on 15 September 2012. St James's Palace said there could be "no motivation for this action other than greed".Editor Michael O'Kane defended the publication, saying to the BBC: "I did this as a service to our readers, I'm a little taken aback by the reaction in the UK. It only seems to be an issue in the UK because she is your future queen. But from our point of view in Ireland, Kate Middleton is just another of the fantastic line of celebrities".

In response to the publication of the topless photographs of Kate Middleton, later that day Northern & Shell, the co-owner of the Irish Daily Star, announced it was "taking immediate steps to close down the joint venture".
On 17 September 2012, editor Michael O’Kane was suspended pending an investigation into the matter.The following day, it was reported that the "Northern & Shell company was indicating that the company's focus was on exiting the publishing joint venture" rather than closure specifically.It was subsequently reported, that the contract between Northern & Shell and Independent News & Media allows either one of them to give notice of an intention to withdraw and that lawyers from Northern & Shell were trying to extricate Desmond's company from the agreement.