Paper must 'grow space' for new era

IN ANY functioning democracy “it is the opinion of the public which dictates the relevance of a newspaper”, President Mary McAleese said at the weekend.

"It is their money whether as readers or advertisers that keeps the doors open and the printing presses printing. Their fidelity over these generations has been cultivated by all those who worked for The Irish Timesand has to be something worth celebrating . . .," she said.

The President was speaking in Áras an Uachtaráin on Saturday at a reception attended by a cross-section of editorial and commercial staff to mark the 150th anniversary of The Irish Times.

The attendance included the editor, Geraldine Kennedy; managing director Maeve Donovan; chairman of The Irish Times Trust Dr David McConnell and governors of the trust, and the chairman of the board of The Irish Times Ltd David Went and members of the board.

President McAleese said that any newspaper that survived at all from the immediate post-famine era to the present day was itself as rare as it was remarkable.

“That it documented many changing faces of Ireland and of the world during that convulsive century and a half, and metamorphosed itself in response to those changes wrought, says a lot about its innate strength and it certainly answers the question posed in its first editorial as to ‘Where is the room for this new competitor for public favour?’,” she said.

That question was “still relevant though it needs to be edited slightly. ‘Where is the room for this old competitor for public favour?’,” she added.

There was no easy answer to that "beyond the fact that the team that is The Irish Timeshas to create that space, recreate that space, hold that space and grow that space anew," she said.

Vital parts of the answer were “the courage and commitment needed to do successfully today, tomorrow and the next day, what has been done continuously since March 1859, until a 200th birthday lands in the lap of some other editor, some other Irish Times team and some other president in some other unknowable Ireland.”

The Irish Timesis, she said, "in excellent hands." She thanked those at the newspaper for "all you have done, all you have meant to Ireland, all you have contributed".

Referring to this “grieving moment in Irish life, for a lost happiness, that glorious sense of invulnerability,” she said “we now know how vulnerable we are” as “we seek sounder, more solid ground. You are part of that, of the battle to move through it . . . may it bring great success and I hope in 50 years’ time they will see this period as one of extraordinary accomplishment against the odds.”

Offering “sincere congratulations . . . as you celebrate 150 years in pursuit of excellence”, she concluded: “It’s said that our past in many ways shapes our futures and let us hope that it does with The Irish Times.”

Thanking the President, Geraldine Kennedy spoke of parallels between the presidency and The Irish Times.

The home of the President of Ireland today had once been the former vice-regal lodge of a unionist administration in Ireland, she said, while the presidency of Mrs McAleese, assisted by her husband Martin, was, like The Irish Times, "not defined by borders".

She also thanked the newspaper’s staff for the role they played in its production.

A copy of the first edition of The Irish Times, published on March 29th, 1859, was presented by the editor to President McAleese.