Interview with Geraldine Kennedy of the Irish Times: RTE Radio 1 28-Aug-2010

uvox

Don't know if you heard this interview with Charlie Bird (first item up after the newspaper):

http://www.rte.ie/radio1/marianfinucane/

She certainly comes across as one very cut-and-dried, resolute individual with a strong sense of boundaries. I wouldn't like to mess with Geraldine!

Hilarious bit about the genesis of the Madam Editor title!

Lenny Lovett

Yeah. She comes across as a tough cookie alright. She has been very successful with the paper though.

veritable

Lenny Lovett wrote: »

Yeah. She comes across as a tough cookie alright. She has been very successful with the paper though.

Not according to the 7.6% fall in readership last year for the IT.

uvox

Can't disagree with her comments on the state of Irish journalism and the decline in standards, though - and the madness of the Irish Times acquisition of a property web site for that money.

Lenny Lovett

veritable wrote: »

Not according to the 7.6% fall in readership last year for the IT.

Yeah, but all papers dropped in circulation last year. It's still healthy. It's their peripherals that were bad moves.

jdivision

Lenny Lovett wrote: »

Yeah. She comes across as a tough cookie alright. She has been very successful with the paper though.

She's been a disaster, it's become a vessel for recycled press releases. aside from the political stuff she seems to have zero interest and it shows

uvox

the question must be, then,.... who will be the next editor and how would they improve it... please, no, not Fintan...

Plowman

This post has been deleted.

jdivision

There's loads of assistant editors in the irish Times. The favourite is the internal guy Paul something or other - though why is open to question in that the newspaper's news coverage has been poor so why should it be rewarded. Cliff Taylor's apparently slipped down the pecking order.

FlutterinBantam

uvox wrote: »

Don't know if you heard this interview with Charlie Bird (first item up after the newspaper):

http://www.rte.ie/radio1/marianfinucane/

She certainly comes across as one very cut-and-dried, resolute individual with a strong sense of boundaries. I wouldn't like to mess with Geraldine!

Hilarious bit about the genesis of the Madam Editor title!

Why are you surprised?

Geraldine has always been a tough auld piece of mutton.

Nothing new here surely!

monument

I'm only getting around to playing it now...

Investigative journalism!? An experienced freelance journalist recently said to me that once when he was pitching an article to The Irish Times they told him that they don't do investigative stories (I'm guessing that's outside the few internal staff which do).

Standards? The Irish Times coverage of the Poolbeg incinerator issue this week pissed over Prime Time by allowing the council to make statements which distorted what Prime Time had said without any signs that the paper asked the council any hard questions. They should be ashamed of them self.

She made out that interview that there is no model for journalism online. It may be more true that in online journalism there is no room for editors who are paid as high as she is, bulky companies like The Irish Times, and large, swanky, and expensive city centre offices.

She said about journalists resenting her for being in the PDs, getting elected and coming back to to journalism from politics. I don't think the problem here is crossing over an coming back, but rather being able to separate your views and your work -- something many seem to think she is often unable to do. Appointing mainly people with her outlook is one often mentioned thing. My main problem with her is that she has wanted / wants FF out in some naive view that things will change much without reform.

Authority -- Madam needs to get with the times. Authority isn't the same as it use to be and The Irish Times version of authority is quickly going out the window.

And it's worth noting that while €50m was spent on MyHome.ie, there were also unwise investments in The Gloss, the Gazette group of newspapers and the freesheet Metro. While management were mainly at fault here, Madam even mentions that she was on the board when MyHome.ie was approved.

And on the Madam Editor twitter account -- as others said on the twitter at the time of the interview, does she know the cartoon her paper publishes lampoons people?

jdivision wrote: »

She's been a disaster, it's become a vessel for recycled press releases. aside from the political stuff she seems to have zero interest and it shows

It's nothing new, but I'm hearing press releases and The Irish Times mentioned more and more.

I guess the problem with some political junkies is that they see little outside their own area (I'm talking from experience).

Lenny Lovett wrote: »

Yeah. She comes across as a tough cookie alright. She has been very successful with the paper though.

What are you basing that on?

uvox

monument wrote: »

And it's worth noting that while €50 was spent on MyHome.ie

At fifty quid, she was still robbed. Thanks Maeve.