The third Off Message media-mad podcast features Mark Little, a man who’s already been around the media block more than once.
Mark made his name in RTÉ in the 1990s as a news reporter and Prime Time presenter; he made his fortune when he sold his first subsequent start-up, the news-verifying Storyful, to Rupert Murdoch for a tidy sum a couple of years ago; and he’s now making a play to crack two of modern news delivery’s biggest conundrums, trust and control, with the Dublin-based Neva Labs which he recently co-founded with his former RTÉ and Storyful colleague, Áine Kerr.
I’ve known Mark since his student union days in Trinity College towards the end of the 1980s, just before I managed to blag my own way into RTÉ for the first time, so when I went to meet him in Neva Lab’s central Dublin offices – yup, that’s a Luas bell just outside you can hear peppered throughout – as you might imagine we had a lot to talk about: from how exactly his ambitious news app will work, to his reaction when News Corp came sniffing round Storyful; from the importance of genuine critical feedback in journalism, to his take on re-thinking RTÉ’s funding model; from his call for more ‘solutions journalism’ to how his own personal media consumption has changed radically over the years.
Enjoy:
You might also be interested in this Off Message post on the modern breaking-news phenomenon: https://www.patomahony.ie/2016/03/read-news-today-oh-boy-off-message-28/
4 Comments. Leave new
Thank you for posting the podcast with Mark. I am a big fan of Mark.
Thanks Collette, hope you enjoyed it.
Great Podcast. Interesting and insightful and thanks for allowing Mark to actually answer a question! So often now interviewers cut across an interviewee before allowing the person to fully develop an answer. Looking forward to more episodes.
Thanks Anna Maria, Mark was an easy interviewee, in fairness. More on the way – watch this space! 🙂