I was out of the country for a few days and managed to miss two important/interesting media stories while away. Just my luck.
First up came the news that the Supreme Court had rejected attempts to enforce a permanent injunction against The Sunday Business Post (and as a result other publications) which would have stopped them from publishing information from the Mahon Tribunal which had been deemed ‘private’.
As RTÉ.ie News pointed out at the time, this outcome will have major implications on the ongoing Irish Times / Mahon Tribunal spat as the attempt to obtain Colm Kenna’s sources is largely based on the temporary injunction blocking the publication of confidential materials, which is now defunct.
(More analysis on this over at the Business Post itself)
The other big story (at least in blogging terms) was the arrival of two Irish Times blogs at Ireland.com.
I asked the question ‘Are the Irish Times going to start blogging soon?‘ back in November and I’m glad to see that the answer has been a big, fat ‘YES’.
With the quality of both Jim Carroll’s On The Record and Conor Pope’s PriceWatch blogs so far it certainly seems like the newspaper (or at least some of its staff) has already gotten on the right track, and is ahead of the pack in Irish print-media terms too.
I think (and hope) that these two additions to the Irish blog community are just an experimental toe-dip in the ocean and can’t wait to see what else they have in store. A blog by Stephen Collins, or even the Madam herself, perhaps? I don’t see why not – plenty of people are already showing that editors and important politicos can blog.