Keeping and eye on the world THE WORLD: There was a growing appetite for balanced foreign coverage from an Irish perspective CONOR O'CLERY

Up to the mid 20th century The Irish Times was very much a Dublin broadsheet with a British provincial newspaper mentality. It took its foreign news from the syndication services provided by London dailies. It was memorably described by Vivian Mercier in a 1945 edition of The Bell as a "dyed-in-the-wool, dry-as-dust, dead-in-the-last-ditch ascendancy organ."

There had been some notable exceptions in foreign coverage during its history. John Edward Healy, Editor from 1904–1934, reported from the western front during the first World War, and Bertie Smyllie covered the Versailles peace conference for The Irish Times at the end of that war. Smyllie became Editor in 1934 and in an exceptionally bold decision, he despatched Lionel Fleming to cover the Spanish Civil War from the Republican side, though Fleming's even-handed despatches provoked a boycott by prominent Catholic advertisers. Astonishingly, there is no record of the paper sending any reporters beyond these islands to cover the cataclysmic events of the second World War.

The reliance on British media continued through the 1950s. The newspaper did have a London editor but that correspondent was treated as a representative of a provincial newspaper and admitted to the Westminster lobby, a practice that continues to this day. Only a foreign event with great resonance in Ireland could tempt an Irish Times editor to foot the bill for an overseas assignment. Thus it was that John Horgan, now the press ombudsman, spent much time in Rome from 1962 to 1965 reporting on the Second Vatican Council.

The arrival of Douglas Gageby as Editor in 1963 began the final transformation of the newspaper from a dyed-in-the-wool ascendancy organ to a liberal national newspaper. This coincided with the premiership of Sean Lemass (1959-1966) and Ireland's opening-up to the world in free trade. Gageby subscribed to Agence France-Presse to balance the Anglo-centric perspective on world events.

It wasn't until 1971, however, that the first Irish Times foreign bureau outside London was opened, by Fergus Pyle in Paris. Two years later, when Ireland joined the European Economic Community, The Irish Times, along with the other daily Irish newspapers and RTÉ, opened a staff bureau in Brussels. Given Ireland's integration into the EEC it was inconceivable that reporting of issues such as fisheries and agriculture could be left to British or French news agencies.

While this expansion tended to be an extension of domestic news gathering, it was the beginning of a metamorphosis of The Irish Times into a respected world newspaper. As Ireland adjusted to its expanded role in Europe, it was no longer sufficient to have the same outlook on foreign news as that of newspapers in large British cities. Gageby sent reporters on assignment to Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia), Israel, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, South Africa and the United States.

When Conor Brady became Editor in 1986 his immediate decision to open a Moscow bureau marked the beginning of the present era in Irish Times foreign coverage. It was followed by the location, sometimes temporary, of Irish Times bureaux or the appointment of "super-stringers" – journalists on contract but not on staff – in Beijing, Berlin, Bonn, Jerusalem, Johannesburg, Rome, Paris, Washington, New York and other cities as pivotal news events required. Reader research in the 1990s found a growing hunger for balanced and value-added reporting by Irish correspondents. The unique supply of world news from its own reporters became one of the main reasons for the loyalty of its subscribers. (Even at the height of the Irish Times foreign expansion in the 1990s the paper still lagged behind other European newspapers however. Jyllands-Posten in Denmark, with a similar circulation, had 20 foreign correspondents around the world, compared to half a dozen Irish Times full-time offices.)

As Moscow correspondent in the late 1980s I found a huge interest among readers in news of life and events in the Soviet Union as it opened up to the outside world. And as an Irish journalist I had some idea what Irish Times readers wanted to know. Moreover, as a staff reporter I knew the editorial personnel and the specific editorial needs of the paper, and was given space to convey the full import of what was happening. The difference between my reporting from the Soviet Union and that of correspondents steeped in Cold War mores was underscored when a journalist from the Moscow office of the American news agency United Press International complained: "I wish I could write human interest stories like you do but I'm under instructions not to – and hell, they never write anything nice about us so why should we?"

Consistent, varied despatches from a region act as building blocks to construct a body of knowledge and sometimes even influence government policy. This may have been the case with the Irish Times reporting from China after the opening of a Beijing bureau in 1996. The first-hand chronicling of the emerging economic potential of China, along with critical assessments of Irish government neglect of the region, arguably led to the government's Asia Strategy and the expansion of its trade and diplomatic resources in the Far East.

There are many other specific cases where informed Irish reporting of world events was essential to the newspaper's readership. A recent example was the reporting and analysis of political reaction in Paris and other European capitals after Ireland's rejection of the Lisbon Treaty.

Another instance was that of East Timor. Given the extraordinary Irish interest in and sympathy for the suppressed people of the former Portuguese colony, there was clearly a need for on-the-ground accounts of the upheaval there in the late 1990s that led to the Indonesian withdrawal, followed by considerable Irish government and NGO involvement.

Similarly when US President Bill Clinton became involved in the Irish peace process the Irish Times presence in Washington ensured a steady flow of information and original news on the pivotal US role being played. Clinton practically opened the doors of the White House to Irish journalists – and such doors do not open unless there is someone knocking.

In my experience doors can open in the most unexpected places far from home. In 1998 when Malaysia was thrown into crisis by the arrest of Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, I took a taxi to his family bungalow in the hope of interviewing his wife, Wan Azizah Wan Ismail. To my surprise I was escorted past more than a dozen international journalists camped outside the gates and greeted by Wan Azizah who asked me with a smile, "Tell me all the gossip about Charles Haughey." She gave me exclusive access because she had spent six years at the Royal College of Surgeons in Dublin in the 1970s, training to be an eye doctor, and had followed Irish politics ever since.

Then there is the simple cachet of being Irish that works so well in the United States. When I called a senior executive of a big US company seeking an interview and explained that I was (at the time) the "New York-based international business editor of The Irish Times newspaper of Dublin, Ireland, which is Ireland's leading daily newspaper," the reply was, "Cool!"

There is still a preponderance of syndicated reporting on the pages of this newspaper, from British and American sources (though regrettably no longer from Agence France Press). A reliance on wire services, agencies and syndications is common to all world newspapers, given the increasingly meagre resources available to foreign editors in these days of consolidation and the internet, and now the global recession. They are essential for an ever more demanding readership. However it means that foreign reporters writing for a foreign readership are determining what is news and what angle to take. For example syndicated British reporting from Moscow in recent years has tended to focus more on the souring of relations between Russia and the United Kingdom than readers from other countries might need.

One unfortunate aspect of modern international journalism is that the number of full-time foreign correspondents is declining everywhere. In America it has fallen in less than a decade from around 100 to about half that figure. Some prominent US city newspapers like the Boston Globe no longer even have a foreign editor.

In summary, a combination of staff postings and super-stringers in key cities abroad are essential for a paper like The Irish Times because the dedicated correspondent can bring continuity and a distinctly Irish perspective to bear on political, business and social news, and can service the newspaper uniquely through informed knowledge of the readership and of the needs and priorities of the different editorial sections of the newspaper, while having the authority and financial backing to act on his or her own initiative. This first-hand reporting is more important than ever at a time when journalism is under siege from low-cost proprietors and dumbed-down cable news channels. It is also essential for an internationally respected newspaper like The Irish Times to ensure that news is not over-concentrated on "elite" world centres, and that a cosmopolitan readership can get objective accounts of what is happening in often-neglected developing countries.

Conor O'Clery is a former Irish Times foreign correspondent