‘The Local Eye’: an insight into local newspapers

How are local newspapers coping in a time of changing reader habits? A new six-part series on RTÉ One beginning Thursday, November 12th, will give an insight into both the strains and rewards of the business.

The Local Eye, an RTÉ Cork production, talks to the men and women behind three of Ireland's oldest local titles, the Clare Champion, the Mayo News and the Munster Express, all of which have the distinction of being family-owned.

"We had been approached by a few of the other bigger chains of newspapers to see would we sell," reveals Shelly Galvin, accounts manager for the Galvin family-owned Clare Champion.

“For local news you’re better off to have the local manager,” she adds. “We will keep it family-run and that’s why we wouldn’t sell out and have no notion of selling out.”

And one advantage of keeping it in the family is that Daisy, the photogenic dog, can get her paws on her own column – with a little assistance from veterinary nurse Bev Truss. The pages of local newspapers feature "diversity in the extreme", as Neil O'Neill, managing editor of the Westport-based Mayo News phrases it.

The newspaper, which seven years ago was put on and then taken off the market by the Berry family, covers areas ranging from “the guy who’s running the country” to “why bingo was cancelled in Newport Hall last Friday”, O’Neill tells the programme makers.

“We don’t live in south central LA,” he says. “There aren’t gang wars and drive-by-shootings going on.”

The Walsh family-owned Munster Express, meanwhile, won't "put the boot in" the same way a red-top tabloid newspaper might, according to managing director Kieran Walsh. "The more sensationalist you are, you'll sell more, but in a small community, if you offend a lot of people, well they'll lose trust with you. Sometimes trust is more important than that week's particular scandal. You handle it with a bit of grace if you can."