A [small] cheer for the Sunday Business Post…

It may seem a bit odd that someone on an avowedly left wing site would have a good word for a right of centre Business newspaper, but I was quite heartened to read that the readership has increased by 19% between June 2009 and June 2010.

The Sunday Business Post has an average weekly readership of 193,000 in the 2009/10 survey, which covered the second half of last year and the first half of this year, up from 162,000 in the corresponding 2008/9 survey.

Which only goes to give them an opportunity to get a dig in at the competition…

This is 25,000 more readers than the Sunday Tribune, whose readership fell to 167,000 from 172,000 in the previous year.

Well… okay.

The thing is that to my mind the SBP possesses one quality that sets it apart from the other Sunday newspapers, indeed from most Irish news media. It is serious about its business.

This doesn’t mean that its outlook is mine, or most likely yours. But there’s more than enough there to work with as this site has found over the years, but there’s usually something of some use, some nugget of information to consider, some comment to reflect upon.

Now, if only there was a means to capture some of that readership, and its clear interest in matters economic away from orthodoxy (although the SBP diverges on that orthodoxy on occasion, although almost overwhelmingly in a rightwards direction). Because one senses that there is a search for answers and – yes – alternatives.