They reported wars, outraged monarchs and promoted the case for their country’s freedom. The pages of Irish Journalism Before Independence: More a Disease than a Profession are filled with the remarkable stories of reporters, proprietors and propagandists. Sixteen leading writers celebrate the emergence of Irish Journalism in this original and engaging volume. These leading media academics, historians and scholars join in what is a festschrift travelling the long Irish nineteenth century to 1922.

Their stories, narratives and histories illustrate the emergence of Irish journalism chronicling the evolution and development of the profession, and the various challenges confronted by the first generation of modern journalists.

The profession’s past is framed by reference to its practitioners and their practice. Readers are treated to studies of foreign correspondents, editorial writers, provincial newspaper owners, sports journalists and the challenges of minority language journalism.

The volume goes beyond Ireland to explore the work of Irish journalists abroad and shows how the great political debates about Ireland’s place in the United Kingdom served as a backdrop to newspaper publication in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

In his preface Professor James Curran concludes that the volume “advances by leaps and bounds the history of the Irish press”.

The collection makes valuable and important contribution to our knowledge of Irish journalism - and like all good reportage it offers its readers a very good read.

Preface James Curran
Introduction Kevin Rafter
1 Journalism in Ireland: The Evolution of a Discipline Mark O’Brien
2 How journalism became a profession Michael Foley
3 Loyalty and Repeal: The Nation, 1842-6 M. L. Brillman
4 Keeping an Eye on the Tsar: Frederick Potter and the Skibbereen Eagle Matthew Potter
5 The leader writer: James Woulfe Flanagan of The Times Maurice Walsh
6 Mr Russell of The Times Peter Murtagh
7 Emile Joseph Dillon - From our Special Correspondent Kevin Rafter
8 The Irishness of Francis McCullagh John Horgan
9 Patriotism, Professionalism and the Press: The Chicago Press & Irish Journalists, 1875-1900 Gillian O’Brien
10 O’Brennan Abroad: An Irish Editor in London and America Anthony McNicholas
11 Newspapers, journalists and the early years of the Gaelic Athletic Association
Paul Rouse
12 Newspapers, Journals, and the Irish Revival Regina Uí Chollatáin
13 Arthur Griffith and the Freeman’s Journal Felix M. Larkin
14 ‘The prose of logic and of scorn’: Arthur Griffith and Sinn Féin, 1906-1914 Ciara Meehan
15 From the ‘Freeman’s General’ to the ‘dully expressed’: James Joyce and Journalism Terence Killeen
16 Truce to Treaty: Irish journalists and the 1920-21 peace process Ian Kenneally