Category: Social & Cultural
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Is podcasting about to take its next Great Leap Forward?
The article first appeared in Village magazine, July-August 2018 edition Anyone using the Google mobile search app to look for a podcast on an android phone in the last month will have noticed something interesting happening. In addition to the usual links to relevant websites or iTunes directories, Google presents direct links to the most…
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Halt the embargo
An edited version of this article first appeared in Village magazine, June 2018 edition Can you determine what the following news reports all have in common? * Eoghan Murphy, Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government announced that Orders have been made directing that bye-elections be held to fill the vacancies in the Seanad caused…
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#RepealThe8th: Oldies get it wrong again
An edited version of this article first appeared in Village magazine, June 2018 edition You should stop reading right now. Pay no attention to pretty much every columnist of my generation. We got it wrong. Opinion polls are only as good as the people who interpret them, and we all filter our interpretations though our…
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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
An edited version of this article first appeared in Village magazine, September 2017 edition 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…
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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…
