Examiner and me: Happy days of Hibs and  secret hatches     

EXAMINER 180: As part of the marking of the 180th anniversary of the first Examiner, Cork writer Cónal Creedon selects some of his memories of the paper 

Cónal Creedon, writer. 'I grew up behind the counter of a newsagent's.'

Imagine a world without the internet. I came of age at a time when news was a scarce commodity – primarily beamed from Dublin by the state broadcaster Raidió Teilifís Éireann. This singular source of broadcast news circumvented contradiction and dissent. 

The island of Ireland was insular and monocultural. We were – One Country. One People. One News. And, far from being ahead of our time, 1974 Ireland was all that Orwell’s 1984 had predicted.