The commercial difficulties of our company have drawn more than a little coverage in other forums in recent weeks, some offerings more colourful and imaginative than others. An internal problem of sorts arose about how to write about this travail ourselves - partly a reluctance to appear to be navel-gazing, partly also because the exercise felt somewhat mechanically awkward.
It had to be done, of course, not least in the simple interest of making the unvarnished facts available to readers who had a natural curiosity about the extent of and the likely fallout from our difficult financial prospects. In the heel of the hunt, the chosen mechanism was to have Padraig Yeates write a number of pieces as straightforward industrial relations stories.
Last week's four-part series on the Opinion page (in newspaper parlance, the OpEd page, as in opposite the editorial or leader page) was intended as a development of the general theme, and aimed at putting in perspective for readers the relationship between the newspaper and its governing trust.
The story has moved on somewhat in recent weeks in that the in-house group of unions has nominated consultants to examine our financial position.
They will report their findings to the unions within the next week or so and the latter will then resume talks with the company to work out how the necessary savings are to be made.
Given the urgency of our financial position, that might seem dilatory progress. Readers should know however that in recent years the company concluded "house agreements" (deals with individual unions) which now inform the nature and direction of employee-company relations. In essence, the house agreements have in common a partnership method of sorting out problems and achieving change: a consultative and consensual model rather than the outmoded and sometimes confrontational methods of the past.
It is the mature and commonsense way of doing business inside a company in the 21st century, but of course as managers and other staff have been getting used to working in the partnership mode, both sides have found it a learning experience - and learning sometimes takes time. Given the serious implications of the present difficulties for both company and staff, it is also important for everyone concerned to be assured that we are moving in an agreed way towards agreed goals.
Reader reaction to all of this has been very reassuring, even touching at times. The straw poll that is our traffic in phone calls, e-mails and snail-mails has by and large been sympathetic, supportive and positive. Most readers said in one way or another that the newspaper was a very important fixture in their lives. One long-time reader went so far as to declare that his daily Irish Times fix was even more important to him than his mobile phone.
One of the inadvertent events that at times bedevils the smoothest of industrial processes struck our production line on the night of Friday, November 9th.
Within the tight confines of D'Olier Street's ground floor are squeezed the 15-year-old rotary presses; at basement level are the huge rolls of newsprint paper; on the first floor, a Heath Robinsonesque inserting machine which folds supplements into the main newspaper. Conveyor belts move the lot to the despatch, labelling and packaging lines in the loading bay. Occasionally, something goes awry.
That night one of the main conveyor belts went wonky. While it was being repaired (and this entire operation is peopled by teams to whom problem-solving on the run is second nature), an ad-hoc line ferried newspapers to despatch. Unfortunately, this meant bypassing the inserter on which sat the Weekend review section. Approximately 20 per cent of the run had to be sent out without that section.
The following morning, the switchboard fielded more than 300 calls from readers who had not received their Weekends. Some were irate, and understandably so, but most were sympathetic. On Monday and Tuesday, telephone calls, e-mails and other contacts were still coming in to our circulation sales people. Again, the general tenor of the requests was typically: "You must have enough problems in there at the moment without me calling, but d'you think you could send me the Saturday Weekend?" Copies were posted to all who sought them.
On that occasion, it wasn't the press itself that let us down. Purchased at a time when our circulation was around 85,000 copies per day, the Uniman 4/2 was an advanced colour press at that time. Nowadays, circulation sits at a record 120,000 copies per day, but print runs can be as high as 160,000 to 175,000 on a Thursday or Friday night; papers are also individually a lot bigger than they were 15 years ago. All in all, the press gets us through some nights on wings of prayer and tender loving care from our nonpareil printers.
My colleague Mary O'Brien last month reported in this slot on the high-tech solution to our printing problems. On an eight-acre site in Citywest, our new printing hall is complete. Inside it, a printer's dream: a MAN Roland GeoMAN that is every bit as advanced for its time as the D'Olier Street Uniman was 15 years ago. It's fully commissioned and ready to roll, as soon as union negotiations can be concluded.
Niall Kiely is Readers' Representative of The Irish Times