I wanted to be a journalist from a young age. When I was five years old and living in Boston, I looked at the anchorwoman on the TV news and said to my mother: "When I grow up I want to do what she does."

I was born in Oughterard, Co Galway, but lived in Boston, where my mother is from, between the ages of two and 14. I guess I've always been observant and fairly interested in the affairs of the world. As a child I was called "a news bag" - a nosy kid - not a compliment back then, but an explanation for the ways things turned out.

I would take down the registration numbers of suspicious-looking cars. I guess noticing small details like that led me up the journalism path - I liked the idea of having to dig to find out something.

I did a BA in Mary Immaculate College in Limerick, majoring in English and communications. After that, I did a one-year postgraduate course in applied communication in NUI Galway.

Originally, I had intended to pursue a career in broadcast news. The postgraduate course focused on print journalism and I wanted to get a taste for broadcasting, so I did a work placement in TV3. For me, broadcast journalism was more difficult as you have to condense many facts into a strictly limited time, usually just a few seconds. In print journalism there is more scope to give more details. And journalists love to tell the public everything they know - within legal limits!

I think with journalism in general it's a case of being in the right place at the right time. Even with getting my first job, here on the Galway Advertiser. The job became available - and so was I.

My responsibility on the paper is the business and appointments section. I also write general news articles, features and the backpage column, Galway Life, under the pen name Lucy Locke. I've been here a year now and I think I've sunk my teeth in practically everything, except sport - definitely not my forte. However, in journalism you often have no choice other than to make something your forte quickly. If someone is out sick or a story breaks and you're in the newsroom, it's a matter of getting the information quickly and accurately and reporting it. The expression, "It's better to know a little about a lot than a lot about a little", has true meaning in this profession.

Growing up I heard all the "glamour" stories about how journalists get to travel and meet famous people, etc. Then, at college, I got the impression that journalists were aimless beings, always wanting to move on. Neither is true in my case. Much of my work is deskwork, following up press releases and phone calls. While there are many opportunities to get out and about, I often find there aren't enough hours in the day. While many journalists don't stay in one place for too long, there are some journalists who remain with provincial papers for the whole of their careers and are quite content to do so. I see myself in this boat. And I feel very lucky to be in the Galway Advertiser at a time of such exciting change.

The paper was founded 30 years ago and was Ireland's first free newspaper. It is still one of the main sources of local and international news for Galway and is about to move from its present premises to a new location on Eyre Square, where we have the all the latest in communications technology.

Provincial papers offer a valuable alternative to the dominant national papers, covering stories that are overlooked by the nationals.

Stories of national interest also require local angles in provincial papers, and sometimes these local stories develop into even more interesting stories, leading to lengthy debates. In addition, local papers have their quota of weddings, funerals and regional events to report. These may not seem important to outside readers, but they certainly are to the families, friends and acquaintances of those involved and accuracy in recording them is as important, if not more important, than front-page stories.

In conversation with Barbara McKeon