Congratulations to the team at The Irish Post on its first anniversary. In August last year Thomas Crosbie Holdings, owners of the Irish Examiner, decided there was no future for the Post and closed it down. But the staff weren't taking that lying down and campaigned to get the paper reopened. Their saviour was Cork-born businessman Elgin Loane who brought the paper back from the dead last October. Since then the Post, which was started in 1970 by the late Breandán Mac Lua as a weekly paper for the Irish in Britain, has thrived. I was at its Barbican offices a couple of weeks ago, and met Elgin, MD Niamh Kelly and the small but dedicated news team. It was great to be back. I have been involved with the paper since the mid-1990s, have redesigned it twice, sat on the interview panel for assorted editors and trained the staff. My colleague and friend Brian Page is holding the fort as acting editor, something he also did in the 1990s, while the paper appoints a new full-time boss. What is abundantly clear is that the spirit, determination and hard work of the staff is one of the main reasons the paper has survived. It is a fantastic story ... how many other papers can you name that have closed down and been resurrected, particularly in the current climate? Well done to them all and here's to many successful years ahead.
My summer reading included The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman, former editor of the International Herald Tribune in Paris. The backdrop to his first novel is an English-language paper based in Rome. The good times are over, circulation is down and it has failed to move into the brave new digital world. The remote owners aren't in the least bit interested. Each chapter looks at the frailties of one of the paper's characters - the has-been Paris correspondent, the pedantic corrections editor, the smart and cosmopolitan editor. As the paper falls apart, so do their lives. It is funny and just a bit close to home. If you work in newspapers, you will recognise the people and the scenario. It reminded me of the novel Still Lives, by my Northern Echo colleague Brian Page, which tracks the flawed lives of the characters on a 'fictitious' Northern newspaper, the Evening Leader. Also funny and, uncomfortably, even closer to home.
