There’s nothing Irish people like more than being told how great they are by outsiders and sure aren’t we the greatest little country on Earth to be sure. So the press release yesterday that Ireland topped the Forbes list of best countries to do business with was reprinted by nearly all of the national media and tweeted by so much of the Irish Twitterati that some had to filter it.
But Forbes must not have thought much of the list as it didn’t make their print edition! Maybe I’m mistaken but I downloaded the Dec 16th PDF and couldn’t find a reference to it anywhere. Download here yourself and have a look. Forbes seem to have a website with a combination of editorial pulled from their magazine and then random articles from contributors. Here’s an article that is in the Dec 16th issue. Note the ‘This story appears in the December 16, 2013 issue of Forbes.’ header at the top.
The Irish article doesn’t have this header. The quality of contributions that make the website but not the magazine is questionable. Here’s a website article claiming that the Third Space cafe in Smithfield is going to take down Starbucks.
So Forbes seems to be turning itself into a Buzzfeed style content farm. And one of the random stories that a writer might have made to hit his quota for the week has a whole nation patting itself on the back.