ABOUT ME
For the past twenty something years I've been working in media and communications, beginning at streaming media company Servecast, back when Real Player spluttered out 33kbps video, long before anyone had even dreamt of Spotify, Netflix or Sky Go.
These days you can find me out in Glasnevin (above ground) in Dublin City University, where I am the Communications Manager.
My full work history is on my LinkedIn profile. The highlights and a selection of my writing is below.
I enjoy swimming at Rosses Point, slow afternoons at the Tate Modern and walking down Avinguda Diagonal towards the Camp Nou (before they started to knock half of it down) on match day.
I like listening to The Knife, Tupac, Pantha du Prince and Mobb Deep and sinking into the couch with a good book.
BROADSTONE FILMS
I produced both Shooting the Darkness, a documentary about photography in Northern Ireland during The Troubles and Sold: The Eircom Shares Saga, about the privatisation of Telecom Éireann for Broadstone Films.
Shooting the Darkness aired on RTÉ One in Ireland, BBC One Northern Ireland and on ARTE in France and Germany.
Sold: The Eircom Shares Saga aired on RTÉ One.
Media
I started at DMG in 2006 and was part of the team that launched the Irish Daily Mail. I was there until mid-2010, on the picture desks of both the Daily and the Mail on Sunday.
I then went to News Ireland, where I worked on the picture desk of The Sunday Times for five years before moving down the corridor to the Ireland edition of The Times, where I was social media and picture editor.
Dublin City UNIVERSITY
I lead the communications team in DCU, and work on all aspects of public relations and public affairs for the university.
WRITING
Academic
In 2016 studied for the MA in Public Relations in TU Dublin. My thesis, Siempre tienes que hacerle caso al Presi, was about footballers communications and explored the shift in media and power to the players, away from the clubs, away from traditional media channels, allowing them to connect with directly with fans and build their own brands, on their terms. I met with journalists and broadcasters like Sid Lowe, Dermot Corrigan, Lee Clayton, Ken Early and Guillem Balague, along with player’s communications managers Nacho Silván, Ben Miller and Begoña Perez.
My respective undergrad and postgrad theses in DCU and Trinity were on the digital divide and what the consequences are for those left behind in the digital revolution and a look at Robert Putnam’s book on the decline of social capital in the United States, Bowling Alone, in an Irish context.
Newspapers and radio
Some of the pieces I've written for The Sunday Times, The Business Post and The Independent plus the radio essays that were part of Breakthrough: Media moments that shaped the world on Newstalk are below. These days I mostly write press releases.
I’ve also reviewed films for RTÉ Radio One’s Arena.
On photographer Jane W. Shackleton
Alexander Masters and A Life Discarded
The Past has a great Future - Mick Brown's Dublin
Mark Katz's Groove Music on the art of DJing
Photographing Ireland's coastline
Coffee table books for Christmas
My Breakthrough columns are here. Among the episodes I wrote are Padraig Flynn's infamous appearance on the Late Late Show, the War of the Worlds, the end of Century Radio and the unveiling of the iPod.
Q&A at IFI screening of Shooting the Darkness. (L-R) Trish Lambe, Alan Lewis, Thomas Kelly and Tom Burke. Photo: Bryan Meade
Over the course of three years, I worked with Tom Burke of Broadstone Films on Shooting the Darkness, a film about the men who unwittingly became war photographers on the streets of their own towns. They did not leave their homes in Northern Ireland in search of war and adventure: the violence erupted around them. They expected a career of wedding photography and beauty pageants and instead the images they produced during the worst years of the 'Troubles' would come to define that conflict. It has aired on RTÉ in Ireland, on ARTE in France and Germany, and the BBC One in Northern Ireland.
It has played to sold out screenings at the Irish Film Institute in Dublin, the Queen’s Film Theatre in Belfast, the Institut Français in Zaragoza and Huesca, and has featured at the Chicago Irish Film Festival, the San Francisco Irish Film Festival, the Toronto Irish Film Festival and the Capital Irish Film Festival in Washington DC.
The film was funded by RTÉ, ARTE and the BAI.
If you’re in Ireland, you can watch it on the RTÉ Player. It’s not currently on the iPlayer but you can rent it on IFI@Home. A book based on the documentary was published in October 2019 by Blackstaff Press.
Selected press FOR THE FILM
“Excellent and supple documentary on the photographers of the Troubles” - Peter Crawley’s review in The Irish Times
Through a Troubled Lens - feature by Anna Carey in The Sunday Business Post
“[An] enlightening and perceptive film about Northern Irish press photographers” - Liam Fay’s review in The Sunday Times
“They saw an astonishing amount of horror” - my interview with Aoife Barry of The Journal
Putting the Troubles in the frame - a piece I wrote about the documentary for RTÉ Culture
“An excellent account of a massively important period of Irish history” - Paul Moore’s review for Joe.ie
The art of documenting war and conflict - Ellen Thornton for RTÉ Brainstorms
Eye-opener: Why border-free Ireland is worth striving for - Claire Byrne for RTÉ
« Irlande, frontière du Brexit » : entre drames passés et futur incertain - Alain Constant’s review in Le Monde
Shooting the Darkness: Capturing the violence of the Troubles - Fiona Murray for BBC News
Sold: The Eircom Shares Saga is an RTÉ documentary on the privatisation of Telecom Éireann. A seminal event in recent Irish history, this is the story of how the hope and enthusiasm of the Telecom Éireann flotation in 1999 ended in disaster, piles of debt, and losses for the 500,000 average citizens who dipped their toes into the stock market.
It was directed by Tom Burke. It aired on RTÉ One and you can watch it on the RTÉ Player. I produced and researched Sold and conducted a number of the on-camera interviews.
Among those we interviewed are former Minister of Public Enterprise Mary O’Rourke, former Former General Secretary of the CWU and chairman of the Telecom Éireann Employee Share Ownership Trust Con Scanlon, former Business Editor of The Sunday Independent Shane Ross, Former Chief Economist of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions Paul Sweeney, Journalists and broadcasters Matt Cooper and Richard Curran, Economist Colm McCarthy, Business Editor of The Sunday Times Brian Carey and Former Secretary General of the Dept of Department of Communications, Energy, Marine and Natural Resources Brendan Tuohy.
SELECTED PRESS FOR THE DOCUMENTARY
“The Wolf of Wall Street meets Glenroe” - Ed Power’s review in The Irish Times
“Excellent RTÉ documentary” - Billy Foley’s review in The Irish News
“A national float that sank like a stone in the roaring 1990s” - Emmanuel Kehoe’s review in The Business Post
“An illuminating look back at Eircom” - Matt Cooper for The Business Post
“It is a tale full of useful lessons” - Richard Curran for The Sunday Independent
“An Irish disaster story revisited” - RTÉ Radio One’s Liveline
Contact me