After five years as editor of Kildare's Leinster Leader, farewell and thanks for all the memories

I started work at the Leinster Leader in November 2007, having been poached by the-editor John Whelan from the ‘uppity’ startup Kildare Post freesheet, which I’d helped to found the year previously.

Well-known Newbridge journalist Jane Mullins had asked me to work on that new publication, alongside my current Leinster Leader colleague and comrade-in-arms of over 16 years, Niamh O’Donoghue.

Jane and her colleague Barbara Sheridan — both then of the Kildare Nationalist, which Barbara edits today — had given me a start in journalism as a green but eager TY student many years previously. We had a crazy few months getting that cheeky new tabloid paper off the ground — alongside advertising sales legends Cathryn Kelleher and Anna Fortune, latterly also of the Leinster Leader parish.

My move from the Post to the Leinster Leader was a move up in the journalism world, and I was happy and proud to get the opportunity to join the ranks of a newspaper that had been coming into the house in The Oaks, Newbridge, since I was a child.

That period 15 years ago was also a time of huge change for the Leinster Leader — having been lately bought from its longtime Irish owners by UK media giant Johnston Press, there were massive changes in personnel and changes in how we were to operate.

Time of change

And change, constant change, was to be the hallmark of my decade and a half at the newspaper.

The Leinster Leader I joined, on the surface of it, bears little resemblance to the publication of today. It was a grand old traditional broadsheet back then, with mere lip-service paid to an online presence.

Circulation and advertising was higher, certainly — but nobody read us on their phones (the iPhone, in fact, had just come into existence) and the website certainly wasn’t the constantly-updated source of breaking news it is today.

The former Leinster Leader building, which we left almost four years ago, still dominates South Main Street in Naas in all of its granite glory. The title had been published from thereabouts since its founding in 1880 — but even 15 years ago it was rickety and rackety inside and barely fit to house a modern, increasingly tech-connected newsroom.

The location was great, though — a journalist could sprint into the courthouse if we got a tip on a controversial case; or nip over the road to McCormack’s to interview a member of the public, watch a bit of racing or… meet a man about a greyhound, you might say.

And the South Main Street front office was open house for anyone coming up the street who might pop in to buy a paper, place a memoriam ad or just have a chat.

It wasn’t really that long ago, but it was a different pace of work. And while some older folk reminisced then about the ‘good old days’ when there was less pressure and more time to delve in-depth, now (especially in a post-Covid, remote working world) I find myself remembering the mid-to-late noughties in much the same way.

Memorable stories

Some big stories stand out over the years since — the visits of the Queen and the Dalai Lama to Kildare; the Naas Shopping Centre saga (it’s not over yet!); tragic murders including, heartbreakingly, teenager Ana Kriegel; the ongoing searches for traces of Deirdre Jacob and Trevor Deely.

The best days were the busy days. The Punchestown Festival was a feast of its own every year, even though some of us never saw the racecourse but still had a great old time.

Elections, national and — even better — local, were like Christmas coming early, from the excursions on the campaign trail with the candidate hopefuls and no-hopers alike; to the live election blogs from the count centres with contributions from all and sundry (things tended to get a tad surreal around 2am on the third day of counting…).

As a local newspaper reporter, you’re a part of community life and events — and many’s the schools debate or local festival queen competition I judged (in the case of the latter, the rule of thumb was to always have a straight line to the exit doors after the result was announced, for fear you’d get buttonholed by a runner up’s cross mammy).

The Leader went through six editors, a move from broadsheet to tabloid, and another change of ownership — to current owners Iconic Media — between then and March 2017, when our then editorial director Alan English gave me the editor’s jersey. It was a job I had wanted for much of my professional life as a journalist, and a privilege to take on.

Several notables had occupied the role before me. John Wyse Power, in the editor’s chair in the 1880s, helped found the GAA. Michael O’Kelly was interned several times in the aftermath of the 1916 Rising and the Civil War, for his republican activities and thundering editorials on the pages of the Leinster Leader.

While I’ve managed to avoid jail time — so far — my own period in the hotseat certainly hasn’t been boring.

I joke we’ve been through trials to rival the biblical Egyptians since then, between pestilence and plague with Covid-19; the sad loss of longtime and much-valued staff who were made redundant during the pandemic; plus a spell in exile (at our sister paper The Leinster Express’s offices in Portlaoise).

That came after we left the historic old South Main Street offices on the very last day of 2018. Then followed a five-month period where the newspaper was produced and websites run from Laois and by journalists working from home. Then our newsroom amalgamated with our former rivals, The Kildare Post and KildareNow.com, and moved into a new home between Newbridge and Naas.

We sighed with relief that we need never work remotely for long periods of time again. Little did we know what would strike us a scant year later…

I’m proud of how, in the last five years, we have shifted the Leinster Leader from a mainly print newspaper to a responsive, digital-first news organisation with our two websites, LeinsterLeader.ie and KildareNow.com.

That has taken a lot of work and I pay full tribute to current and former colleagues for undertaking it.

Maybe in the process we have lost some elements of the old newspaper that readers valued. But choices had to be made, given the resources available to our newsroom, and I believe that our digital shift and new focus has given the Leinster Leader the best chance of not only surviving but thriving well in its third century, as a trusted and reliable source of Kildare local news.

Having done much of the groundwork and mindset change, and having grown our online audience — make no mistake, the Leinster Leader now has more weekly readers than at any time in its storied history — the stage is set for the Leader to keep growing, shifting, changing and improving over the next decade.

Because, at the end of the day, some things never change. As a local news publication — your local news publication — it is the stories that ultimately matter the most. Covering your courts; keeping an eye on what your county councillors are up to; covering your delights, joys and tragedies.

Local news matters and will continue to matter.

We all have regrets leaving a job, and one of mine is that I never got to produce a bumper 32-page Kildare All Ireland winners special souvenir supplement, complete with commemorative poster. I’ll leave that as something for the next editor to look forward to.

Thank you to all Leinster Leader readers for your support, comments, criticisms and contributions over the last decade and a half.

Thank you to my colleagues, mentors and bosses, past and present, new and old. There are far too many of you to name individually but I’m eternally grateful to you all.

The Leader is in the safe hands of our current editorial staff — Paul O’Meara, Senan Hogan, Niamh O’Donoghue, Daragh Nolan, Ciarán Mather and Aishling Conway — with Cathryn Kelleher and Eadaoin Rigney on the commercial side.

And, of course, there’s the inimitable Tommy Callaghan, our revered sports editor, a true legend of the news industry and a 55-year veteran of the Leinster Leader. He joined the printworks as a young fella and has been an integral part of the paper ever since. A valued and trusted colleague and friend, and I will dearly miss working with him every day.

Best of luck

I wish my successor, whoever she or he may be (and have a look at the job description on page 17 of the paper if you fancy throwing your hat in the ring for it) the best of success with the challenges ahead.

Editing the Leinster Leader has been an absolute honour.