Sadly it’s time to mourn the passing of a fine Sunday newspaper
I believe O’Reilly would never have ceased the publication of a newspaper title just as a general election campaign began. The cynic might say that he wouldn’t have passed on the opportunity to use a title to influence the outcome of a general election campaign, remembering the infamous “payback time” editorial that the Irish Independent ran in favour of removing the 1997 Fine Gael led Rainbow coalition in favour of Fianna Fáil’s return to power. My experience as editor of The Sunday Tribune from September 1996 to November 2002 was that I had full editorial control over political coverage (as long as I did not support the IRA, which I would not have anyway) in any case, I did not believe that a newspaper should editorialise as to how people should cast their votes, instead believing that a newspaper should provide as much information and factually based analysis as it could to enable better informed readers to make up their own minds.
I also believe that O’Reilly, if he was still involved in business decision making at IN&M, would not have countenanced the situation that has developed whereby staff at the newspaper, some of whom have 20 years service, would be left with mere statutory redundancy to buffer them from pending unemployment.
Technically The Sunday Tribune is an “associate” of IN&M, which owns just under 30% of the newspaper. Therefore responsibility for the debts incurred was left with all the ordinary shareholders, and limited to their investment in the company, once the receiver was appointed. However, the reality is that IN&M has been in absolute control of The Sunday Tribune for over a decade and a half. It has massive debts outstanding to it from funding its losses on an annual basis. It converted many of these debts some years ago to convertible preference shares which are now worthless. It has made the key appointments, both of editor and managing director, on a number of occasions without reference to other shareholders. I first met the chairman of the newspaper, Gordon Colleary, and its then managing director, Frank Cronin, after I had been appointed as editor, a job for which I did not even have to complete an interview.
IN&M could argue that it had funded losses amounting to millions each year for nearly 20 years and that it kept many people in jobs when, if it had been more hard-headed, it would have been justified in closing the paper at any point in the last 15 years. However, IN&M had a commercial rationale behind its investment in the title. It first pounced to take its shareholding in the early 1990s because it feared that somebody else would do so if it didn’t and would then invest serious resources into making the paper a serious competitor to its own highly profitable Sunday Independent. In particular it feared the arrival of the Daily Mail, something that happened years later when it bought the newspaper known as Ireland on Sunday and then changed it to the Irish Mail on Sunday. IN&M gave me a specific commercial brief: keep the sales of the paper high enough to block the growth of the Irish edition of The Sunday Times and its potential to take circulation and advertising revenue away. This we did until I decided to change career by moving into broadcasting; the circulation remained consistently at over 80,000 at that time.
By this stage I was frustrated that IN&M had no real commitment to making the newspaper a strong challenger in the market. I formed the opinion that while IN&M would fund the losses, as long as these were reduced, it was not interested in investing sufficiently in marketing, printing and other necessities to make The Sunday Tribune a serious and potentially profitable competitor in the market. A particular idea that I had developed to improve the marketing and financial position of the paper was slapped down because it would have involved investment by outside parties; when an opportunity to embark on a new career in broadcasting, at The Last Word on Today FM, presented itself I decided to take it, only after lengthy deliberation and a lot of sorrow because of the people I was leaving.
I remained an admirer of much about O’Reilly senior, if aware also of his shortcomings. Above all, I believe that he had a genuine love for newspapers and for their role in society, even if at times other papers within the group did things to curry favour with their proprietor’s perceived political and business interests. I addressed some of this in my book Who Really Runs Ireland? His loss of control of IN&M, where his family’s shareholding is now less than that of Denis O’Brien’s, must have proven particularly hard for him.
I hope that Gavin O’Reilly, son of Tony, who graduated to the position of chief executive at IN&M, and who consistently has enjoyed salary and other benefits of more than €1 million per annum, finds some way to honour his company’s moral obligations to the workers at The Sunday Tribune. I don’t doubt what his father would do if he, rather than his son, was the boss.
The Sunday Tribune has remained a newspaper full of many fine journalists who I enjoyed reading each Sunday and which I miss now.
The list of fine reporters and writers was long: I hope people that I worked with when I was there, like Michael Clifford, Diarmuid Doyle, Shane Coleman, Ger Siggins, Malachy Clerkin, Olivia Doyle, Kieran Shannon and others — forgive me if I have left any others out — will pick up new employment quickly. Their skills would do justice to any newspaper or, in some cases, broadcaster.
IT WAS a great privilege for me to have edited the newspaper for over six years and I am thankful to Tony O’Reilly and others for giving me the opportunity to do so. It advanced my career greatly but I hope that they would agree that I worked my hardest to do all I could to make the paper a success.
The newspaper, under a variety of editors, did many good things in Irish journalism. Many of the leading names in Irish media today worked at some stage for the newspaper, excellent journalists, committed to finding out the truth and telling it.
From my own time there I will also remember the excellence and commitment of people like Lise Hand, Brian Carey, Richard Curran, Paddy Murray, Richard Oakley, Catherine Cleary, Claire Grady, Brenda Power, Harry McGee, Stephen Collins, Mark Keenan, Paul Howard (both in his own right and as Ross O’Carroll Kelly), and many others (apologies to those who I should have named and haven’t) who went on to perform excellently with other publications.
People say that it was too expensive, at €2.70 a copy, but that is the price of a cup of coffee in many places. I know all that goes into producing a newspaper, any newspaper, and it is an expensive business. The idea that news comes for free, as it does from the internet, is not viable. That’s an issue for another day. Now instead it is time to praise the editorial performance of The Sunday Tribune and mourn its passing.
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
