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‘To be a journalist is to have a front-row seat on the dark side of life’: Veteran journalist Paul Cullen signs off

After 33 years and 25,000 articles at The Irish Times, the long-time reporter and correspondent looks back on the major events and changes he witnessed in journalism

Paul Cullen in The Irish Times newsroom this week to bid farewell after a 33-year career. Photograph: Nick Bradshaw

Paul Cullen's face
Paul Cullen
Sat May 11 2024 - 06:00

After 25,000 articles or so, and 33 years, I leave The Irish Times this week. As with all careers viewed retrospectively, the wonder of it all is where the time went.

One minute, I am composing my first front-page story for the newspaper (about a leaked – if that’s the word – report on Sellafield) and the next, I find myself writing this valedictory article.

I have been around long enough to remember an Irish Times of an earlier era: the rumble of the printing press convulsing the old premises on D’Olier Street each afternoon; occasional sightings of the pinstriped, monocle-wearing owner of the newspaper, the legendary and fearsome Major Thomas Bleakley McDowell; working night shifts (nighttown) that ran to 4am and beyond.

Smoking in the office was allowed, but you invariably wore a suit and were liable to have the shine on your shoes checked before being sent out to report.

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The old building had endless corridors and connecting sets of stairs so you had to concentrate in order not to get lost. A trip to the library or the wages office could take hours, what with the wrong turns and the chats along the way.

It wasn’t a place for the faint-hearted. There were strong characters, big egos, bossy managers; rows and vendettas. A macho atmosphere dominated in the newsroom, notwithstanding the many strong women who worked there. It was never dull.

I started as education correspondent and subsequently moved to cover other areas – the developing world, consumer affairs, politics. There was a spell at the beating heart of The Irish Times – its newsdesk – and I spent years reporting from the planning tribunal in Dublin Castle.

Writing the first draft of history served up many personal highlights. The madcap early years of the tribunal, before it turned into a gravy-train for the legal profession, were thrilling. The Covid pandemic was bigger than any other story in my lifetime – and I was at the eerie heart of it.

There were bad days, but not too many. I’ve been punched, shot at and tied up at various points of my working career. Abused too, but then isn’t that the lot of anyone in the public eye these days?

I couldn’t have done my work without the help of the countless people who have given me their time along the way. Many sources, who only wanted our society to be better, will have to remain anonymous. I tried to do my best by everyone who contacted me; too often, I admit, it wasn’t enough.

To be a journalist is to have a front-row seat on the dark side of life. For a time, I tracked one disaster after another – earthquake in Turkey, flooding in Mozambique, famine in South Sudan. The kindness of strangers often leavened these awful experiences, such as the hospitality given to me by Irish Franciscan brothers in Kenya when I travelled there to investigate the murder of one of their colleagues.

Contrary figures and offbeat topics have always attracted me. I once wrote a short article about the demise of the Dublin company that invented the spice burger; the resultant outcry saved this humble highlight of Irish cuisine.

The newspaper asked me to interview the king of Jordan in advance of his state visit to Ireland. In Amman, I was driven by armed guards to his compound, passing successive checkpoints, all manned by guards bristling with weaponry. Finally, I found myself alone in front of a large house. I knocked on the door, which was opened by a nattily-dressed, rosy-cheeked man of short stature.

Hello, he welcomed me in clipped tones.

Hello, can I speak to the, er, king please.

I am the king!

Thankfully, my interviewee beamed a warm smile. And then I remembered that King Abdullah had been trained by the British army in Sandhurst.

Over the last decade, I have reported on our health system and its oh-too-familiar problems. So much to write about: the spiralling cost of the national children’s hospital; a minister’s plans for care centres in his backyard; access to cancer drugs.

I had the good fortune to witness the tail-end of a fantastic oral culture of journalism, studded with songs and jokes and stories, true and imagined. (The story about an editor claiming expenses for the boat trip to Usher’s Island is probably apocryphal.) Mostly gone now; today, an off-duty journalist is more likely to be found in the gym than the pub.

Good journalism cuts through this thicket of misinformation and general idiocy. But it needs to be properly funded to do so

When I started, a good reporter was measured by the amount of shoe-leather they lost on the job; today, what seems to count is the number of likes, follows and hits a person can garner online.

The thunk-thunk of two-fingered typing has long since been replaced by the ominously quiet hum of computers and an accompanying corporatisation of our trade; the advertising department is now “media solutions” and the newspaper and website are mere “platforms” in a digitised world.

Welded to our computers and, increasingly, our phones, we journalists see less of each other and less of the world we are supposed to be reporting on. Home working, ushered in by the pandemic, has only reinforced this trend.

Another change is the ever-growing influence of PR – everywhere, not just in corporates and government but also in civil society. My mail inbox brims daily with fake news and publicity-seeking wheezes. And so many rubbish surveys – who ever heard of a poll producing a result that was at odds with the person or organisation that paid for it?

Good journalism cuts through this thicket of misinformation and general idiocy. But it needs to be properly funded to do so. And all the while the tech giants steal our raw material, the news that we investigate and write up, for their own profit.

Despite the professionalisation of our trade, journalism seems more emotional now, even sentimental, and definitely less analytical. More prone to group-think, too. News outlets fill with columnists, while news gathering gets overlooked. And yet straight reporting, the type that strives for objectivity, is the core of all good journalism.

A naive young me went into journalism with the aim of making a better society. My older version recognises that democracy is messy, that there are often two sides to every story and that compromises have to be made. And that good journalism remains intrinsic to the checks and balances that contribute to a healthy society.

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