Category: Social & Cultural
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End of an Era at Examiner
An edited version of this article first appeared in Village magazine, December 2017 edition. The proposed Irish Times buyout of Landmark Media, owner of the Irish examiner and several other titles, as well as regional radio station shares, comes as little surprise, having been well flagged for several months. If anything, the surprise is it […]
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Do Not Feed The Bots
An edited version of this article first appeared in Village magazine, November 2017 edition. One in four twitter followers of Philip Boucher Hayes are fake accounts, the RTÉ broadcaster announced on his twitter feed recently. Around the end of August, Boucher-Hayes had noticed an uptick in new followers on Twitter, which he had monitored since. […]
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The Oireachtas Librarians
An edited version of this article first appeared in Village magazine, October 2017 edition. Imagine the government built a research library, and over the years, it built up a valuable archive. No one much uses the library, though if you pay attention, you’ll notice a slow but steady trickle of journalists and policy analysts calling […]
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Guards! Guards!
An edited version of this article first appeared in Village magazine, October 2017 edition. For the old hands who remember previous garda tribunals, there are a lot of familiar faces down in Dublin Castle these days, inquiring into the latest Garda scandals to reach the point where calls for public inquiries could no longer be […]
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Newspapers try some dynamism
The latest national newspapers Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC) report for Irish newspapers bring more bad news for the industry, with a drop in total sales of over eight percent – over 90,000 copies – in the twelve months to the end of June 2017. At the top end of the market, the Sunday Independent […]
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Trust in media unusually high in Ireland
This article first appeared in Village magazine, July 2017 edition In the wake of the Jobstown trial, a lot of commentary followed on both power of social media to influence outcomes, and the credibility (or lack of same) of “mainstream” media in reporting accurately. Perhaps predictably, most of the commentary seemed to reinforce already existing […]
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Charting the Charleton tribunal
This article first appeared in Village magazine, June 2017 edition As the tribunal of inquiry into protected disclosures and certain other matters prepares for its opening statement from counsel in mid-June, Peter Charleton must be wondering what he’s let himself in for. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. The Supreme Court justice initially agreed […]
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Time for more Times
This article first appeared in Village magazine, June 2017 edition Launching a new newspaper is a tricky proposition at the best of times, but in the middle of historic declines in print circulation, as titles struggle to manage the transition to digital first publication, it seems downright bloody-minded. Yet that’s what News UK’s Dublin outlet […]
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The Other P O’Neill
This article first appeared in Village magazine, May 2017 edition When the Irish Times broke the news on Twitter that a new editor was taking over, they accidentally highlighted one of the major problems the newspaper faces. A photo circulated of Paul O’Neill the new editor, taking over from Kevin O’Sullivan, who was stepping aside […]
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RTE won’t be properly funded
This article first appeared in Village magazine, April 2017 edition The idea for a television licence decoupled from ownership of a television, proposed as early as the 2011 election campaign as a “content tax” or “public broadcasting charge” by Fine Gael “to apply to all households and applicable businesses, regardless of the device they use […]
