Roy Unconfined

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Roy Greenslade, this afternoon

This afternoon.

Roy Greenslade , The Guardian’s media correspondent and former editor of the Daily Mirror, giving the keynote speech at at the launch of the 2015 Annual Report of the Press Council of Ireland and the Office of the Press Ombudsman.

Professor Greenslade’s theme was the future of print in Ireland and abroad.

So the UK is still blessed with a diverse press, but what of Ireland’s media and, just as significantly, what about the future for that media?

New Zealand is a country about to have a single media owner.

Could the same happen here?

Is there enough political will to prevent it?

And even if there was, would the free market triumph?

I think it fair to say that the rise of the internet was just a contributory factor to the fact that
one person has accumulated control of the country’s best-selling daily and Sunday newspapers, Dublin’s evening paper, a tabloid, half share in another tabloid, plus 14
regional papers and two national talk radio stations.

However, the digital revolution’s advance is putting his major rival newspaper owners in peril. As in many other countries where newspapers are going to the wall the market-leading owner could well end up being the last man standing.

Gulp.

Prof Greensalde added:

…That’s a very worrying scenario to imagine, although Ireland may benefit from UK-based
newspapers, at least in the short term. I also note that there have been some enterprising
online start-ups here.

I’ve no desire to rain on their parade, just as I admire news start-ups in the UK and the United States, but they have yet to gain the scale of audiences necessary to influence what we might call “the national conversation” and, in so doing, carry forward the journalistic mission on which democracy depends.

FIGHT!

Full text of speech here

Suddenly, national newspapers are heading for that print cliff fall (Roy Greenslade, The Guardian)

Sam Boal/Rollingnews

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21 thoughts on “Roy Unconfined

  1. TheFerg

    BS, I’m a daily reader, rare poster – just wondering what your weekly unique visitor numbers are. How do ye fare vs Joe and others? Readership basically.

    1. Kieran NYC

      I’m increasingly convinced a huge chunk of Broadsheet is just three or four people shouting at each other with multiple usernames

    2. Sido

      BS is right. There was a time, a while back. Maybe John Ryan is after selling it to Dobby.

  2. Andy McGowan

    A person or company should only be allowed to own either one radio station, TV station or newspaper.

  3. boggo

    there Are rumours that some of the new online start ups Are owned by that one man too.

  4. Sido

    ” and, in so doing, carry forward the journalistic mission on which democracy depends.” – This from the newspaper that gives its unquestioning fealty to an unelected, undemocratic, till dipping, dictatorship in Brussels.

    The newspaper that once employed Orwell no longer reads him. It tells us of the virtues of big brother instead.
    Whilst claiming intellectual superiority over the Red Tops. For using bigger words and copying and pasting the same old rubbish over and over again, without an ounce of intelligence. The magazine of the “educated” hand jockey.
    Just die – Guardian.

    1. Keith

      I don’t understand the point you are trying to make here. Sure, I get you don’t like the Guardian, and the EU, but “the newspaper that gives its unquestioning fealty to an unelected, undemocratic, till dipping, dictatorship in Brussels” is a bit over the top, no? Can you point to any evidence of this “unquestioning fealty”?

      Btw, can you provide an example of a news source that does met your standards?

      1. Sido

        I don’t understand the point you are trying to make here – you need to work on that Keith.

        1. Keith

          It was an honest question, I wasn’t trying to take the piss.

          Where have you found “unquestioning fealty” to the EU in the Guardian?

          And could you point to a paper/news-source that doesn’t have this?

  5. RunDemCrew

    And yet he hasn’t got the bälls to name that “one person”. Everyone knows their name.

    Brendan O’Connor

  6. RunDemCrew

    The Gruaniad is a joke. Basically trying to be an English Irish Times.

    As for Greenslade – doesn’t he own property in Ireland? He’s one of those gentrifying out countryside and pricing locals out of living in places they grew up on. He should fupp off back to the UK proper.

  7. Truth in the News

    The print media live in the illusion that they have clout, they don’t as their circulation
    is only read by a small section of the population and given the bias in some of the
    print media, are they to be belived at all, the reality is that online news is the source
    of information to a large section of the population.
    It will go down in history that one of the most expensive mistakes O’Brien made
    was the take over of the Independent, has they editorial policies they advanced
    in print stopped opposition to Water Tax or the support of Sinn Fein…..like some
    previous proprioters who went bankrupt or William Martin Murphy forgotten in
    a vault inside the gate in Glasnevin….the people can always read between the lines

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