Newspaper and broadcasting colleagues gathered in the Round Room of the Mansion House to applaud the winners of the ESB National Media Awards 2002 this week.
Conor O'Clery, this paper's North America Editor, won both the Journalist of the Year and the News Reporter of the Year awards. He came home from New York's Battery Park to receive his two awards, largely in recognition of his coverage of the events of September 11th. O'Clery started out as a sub-editor at The Irish Times in 1973. Since then, he said, he has covered stories in more than 35 countries, including the Soviet Union and China. Writing, he added, "is what energises me, it's what I do". His advice to young journalists: "If you work hard, you get lucky."
Earlier this week he attended a party in the IFSC's Harbour Master bar to mark the publication of Panic at the Bank, which he co-wrote with fellow Irish Times journalist Siobhán Creaton about the AIB/Allfirst scandal earlier this year. Michael McDowell, the Minister for Justice, launched the book.
Susan McKay, of the Sunday Tribune, was awarded Feature Writer of the Year. She was delighted also to learn that her book, Northern Protestants: An Unsettled People, published by Blackstaff Press, is on the list of 25 books from which the public will choose the one that best represents the state of Northern Ireland, as part of World Book Day in March next year. Her ESB Media Award is for an article examining the drink culture and "the lack of ambition or any kind of excitement in young people". The article was written in response to the death of a young girl in Finn Valley, Co Donegal.
At the awards party, Maol Muire Tynan, a former journalist of 23 years and now ESB corporate relations manager, chatted to Aileen O'Toole, a founder of the Sunday Business Post, who has just set up Amas, which, she explained, restructures websites using media techniques.
Eleven journalists were honoured at the awards, including Mark Hennessy, of The Irish Times, who won Political Journalist of the Year and his colleague, John McManus, who was awarded Columnist of the Year.
The week also saw the retirement of Irish Times political columnist Dick Walsh - who was at the awards ceremony - after 48 years as a journalist. Having himself started at the Clare Champion, he advised young journalists who want to learn to start on a local paper. Go n-éirí ádh leis agus go mbeirimid beo ar an am seo arís, mar a dhéarfadh sé féin.