A heartbreaking interview with Ciara Mageean. A portrait of a 100-year-old whose life was saved by the extraordinary kindness of a stranger. A deftly realised column on Ireland’s fuel protests. An investigation that set the news agenda for months and prompted a Government inquiry.
These are some of the stories by Irish Times journalists that were recognised at the Irish Journalism Awards in Dublin this week. We won eight awards in total, far more than any other title – a pleasing affirmation of our pre-eminent place in Irish journalism.
We produce hundreds of articles, videos and podcasts every week. No set of awards can capture the range or the depth of that work, and of course we know that judging panels privilege certain kinds of journalism over others.
Nonetheless, I’d recommend that you spend time reading some of our winning entries. I know how much work went into each of them – they all have one byline at the top, but in every case, somewhere between five and 10 people were involved in getting them to their finished state. These include the editors who commissioned them; the desk editors who interrogated and fact-checked; the sub-editors who corrected errors and applied our house style; the photographers and videographers whose visuals enhanced the words; the graphic artists who illustrated them; the lawyers who did the pre-publication read; the print editors who came up with great presentations; and the audience specialists who got the stories to our readers. In some cases, that entire process took months; in others, an hour or two.
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Two of our awards were for work done in our Culture section. This is an area we invest in more than any Irish news publisher – a commitment that stems from the principles of the Trust that owns The Irish Times but also from a basic journalistic instinct: the arts have a central place in Irish life, and any serious attempt to capture the richness of the society we serve has to have it front and centre. That’s why, every day, you’ll find reviews, interviews and in-depth features on everything from music and film to theatre and visual art. We run more book reviews every week than any national media outlet in Ireland. You won’t find more comprehensive coverage of, say, the Dublin Theatre Festival, anywhere else.
In print, much of that coverage is presented in Ticket, our Saturday culture supplement. It won the prize for Magazine of the Year – welcome recognition for its editor, Liam Stebbing; books editor Martin Doyle and production editor John Lane. “The judges were particularly struck by the winner’s consistency across both submitted issues: the quality of its writing and interviewing, the intelligence of its commissioning and the confidence of its presentation,” the citation stated.
A writer whose work regularly appears in Ticket, Philip Watson, won the award for Arts Journalism and Criticism. His winning entries included a sharp assessment of the Cork Jazz Festival and what Watson saw as its lack of creative ambition.
“The judges were unanimous in deciding this winner,” said John P. O’Sullivan on behalf of the judging panel. “The basic requirements of journalism are to inform (tell us something we do not know), get the facts right, and engage us with the quality of the writing… Our winner demonstrated these requirements in abundance. He introduced us to a couple of intriguing performers outside the popular consensus. He also produced a forensic dissection of what has gone awry with one of our most popular and long-lasting cultural festivals.”
The most memorable interview I read this year was Malachy Clerkin’s account of his conversation with Ciara Mageean, the Irish Olympian who died earlier this month at the age of 34. In the piece, Mageean’s generosity and raw honesty combined with Clerkin’s empathy and skill as an interviewer combine to produce something that stopped readers in their tracks. For that piece as well as for interviews with boxer Kellie Harrington and rugby broadcaster Mark Robson, Clerkin was named Sportswriter of the Year (Broadsheet). The judges said Clerkin had been at the top of his game for years thanks to “his ability to take a sports story and turn it into one of human interest, human endeavour, real life – taking the interviewee and reader into places that perhaps neither of them had considered before starting out on this journey.”
Fintan O’Toole is the most influential Irish journalist of the last half-century. He is the author, for 38 years, of what has been consistently the best newspaper column you can read in Ireland or anywhere else in the English-speaking world. He is the leading practitioner of the form. And he occupies a role in Ireland that has no equivalent in any country I know.
Almost 40 years in, O’Toole’s Tuesday column in The Irish Times is still winning awards. Among the pieces for which he was named Columnist of the Year this week were an excoriating dissection of the Rotunda Hospital’s defiance of public policy on private maternity services and his dismantling of the public rationale for the fuel protests. He was commended for writing that “combined a sharp intellect with precision to expose the hypocrisy and cut through the theatrics of some of the most pressing and significant issues Ireland faces.”
A good foreign correspondent can do everything – turn around a 500-word news story in minutes, file instant analysis on the latest political story, produce match colour, review a restaurant, turn a 45-minute chat with a playwright into a 2,000- word interview and give us an in-depth feature on some aspect of life in their adopted city. Our London Correspondent, Mark Paul, was named Features Journalist of the Year (Broadsheet) for some of his in-depth, longer writing.
The judges highlighted Paul’s piece on 100-year-old Michael Hopkins, a man let down by Ireland as a child and then by Britain as an elderly bachelor; as well as his affecting account of the life and death of Grace O’Malley Kumar. The work stood out “for an ability to bring their subjects to life with empathy, precision and powerful storytelling”, the judges said.
The Constitution of The Irish Times Trust describes a view of the world that is outward-looking, tolerant, curious, interested in divergent views and attentive to the needs of minorities. An interest in the world beyond Ireland’s shores translates, in practical terms, into heavy editorial investment in foreign coverage. The Irish Times employs more foreign correspondents than any media organisation in Ireland, and we work hard to ensure our readers, listeners and viewers have access to overseas reporting of the highest standard produced through an Irish lens. This year, five of the six shortlisted nominees for the Foreign Coverage award were journalists who write for The Irish Times. And the winner was Hannah McCarthy, a freelance journalist whose winning entry included reportage on Cuba’s economic crisis, Palestinian politics and environmental devastation in Guatemala. “Hannah’s work puts people at the centre of important international stories in a way that grips, informs and educates the reader,” the judges noted.
The final two awards went to projects produced by our new investigations unit. Conor Gallagher won the investigative journalism prize for his work in exposing how alumina from a Limerick refinery enters Russia’s weapons supply chain. That story and the ensuing political and diplomatic fallout has arguably been the story of the year. Drawing on trade data, satellite imagery and leaked financial records, the project involved three months to painstaking work – and it was followed by some strong related stories on the ownership of Aughinish Alumina and security concerns surrounding a vessel off the Irish coast transporting alumina from the plant. Gallagher won, the judges said, for “his rigorous, tenacious reporting that exposed an issue of profound public concern, prompted a government inquiry and brought Ireland’s trading relationship with Russia into sharp international focus.”
With the Aughinish investigation we introduced a new immersive scrolling presentation produced through collaboration between our journalists, designers and engineers. It gives us a rich visual treatment that helps bring certain types of stories to life, and versions of it have been used in other projects, including an investigation into Ireland’s role in a global black market gambling empire and a piece on how foreign agitators helped spark racist riots in Belfast. For that work The Irish Times won the prize for digital innovation.
Thanks for reading. We like to hear from you. Feel free to send comments, feedback or suggestions for topics you would like to see covered to feedback@irishtimes.com.
Ruadhán Mac Cormaic
