Magazines Battle for Centre Stage

It promises to be a clash of the media titans.

First the broadcaster and journalist Vincent Browne launched Village, an Irish weekly current affairs magazine, which he promised would return to the investigative reporting that held Irish politicians to account in the 1980s in his magazine, Magill.

Now Magill, which folded a decade ago, relaunches tomorrow with a new "right-of-centre" slant to rival what it calls the liberal domination of the Irish media and the solemnity of Village.

In an already crowded market, media commentators are standing by for the fall-out.

Magill was once a byword for robust anti-establishment investigation which badgered politicians. It exposed planning corruption in Dublin and focused on the notorious "arms trial" in which two government ministers, including Charles Haughey who later became taoiseach, were acquitted of plotting to import weapons for Catholics in Northern Ireland.

At its height, the magazine had a circulation of 80,000 and its editors included the writers Fintan O'Toole and the Booker-nominated Colm Tóibín. One of its favourite topics was the wealth of the now-disgraced Mr Haughey.

When Mr Browne launched Village in October, he said he wanted to recapture the old Magill ethos and "disturb the consensus in Irish society through quality investigation".

He funded the launch with his own money and borrowings. The magazine has a print run of 25,000 and sells for €3 each Saturday.

Mr Browne has focused on international stories he says are neglected by the Irish daily papers.

He has also presented scathing reports on the state of modern Ireland, including the crisis in accident and emergency wards, Shannon airport's use by the US military, and the imprisonment of asylum seekers in Northern Ireland.

But tomorrow's relaunch of Magill, as an 80-page monthly magazine priced at €3.25 with a print run of 30,000, seeks to challenge the "left-of-centre media landscape".

The editor, Eamon Delaney, a former Irish diplomat who served at the United Nations in New York, said he wanted to bring back the "humour and irreverence" of Magill but with a right-of-centre outlook and a sceptical eye on Europe.

The magazine will also feature Private Eye-style satirical sketches. The first issue will include the Cambridge academic Brendan Simms, a leftwing advocate of neo-conservatism, on the importance of Western intervention abroad.

Also writing is Richard Humphreys, of the Irish Labour party, who supports Tony Blair's stance in Iraq.

Rory Miller from King's College London will write about Yasser Arafat. Mr Delaney said the Irish media had been "soft" in their coverage of Mr Arafat.

Michael Foley, a lecturer in journalism at the Dublin Institute of Technology, said the magazine market was already crowded and Village would have to compete with strong investigative journalism.

Mr Foley said the media was not dominated by liberals - but that that view had been put about by journalists themselves. Some columnists had taken up the mantle of conservatism before and failed.

He warned that Magill might still be associated with its final days in the late 1990s, when circulation lagged. He said: "Why launch it under the same name if it is to be completely different?"

John Waters, an Irish Times columnist and a former editor of Magill, said there was scope for countering what he called "a toxic pseudo-liberal bias" in the Irish media. But he said if Magill turned out to be "simply an Irish Spectator" it would not work.

"We don't have Tories in Irish culture," Mr Waters said.

"When Magill started there was such a clear enemy all around: conservatism, conservative Catholicism, bad economics, corruption, a feeling of stagnation.

"Now the whole nature of society is very different and the enemy is hidden. There is still unease, anxiety and alienation but it's so much harder to release and articulate it."

He said Village had not understood the old enemy had changed. Liberal journalists were still writing "as if the old enemy was still alive, as if Eamon de Valera might jump from his grave and smite everyone with his stick".