January 22nd was an interesting day for those of us striking outside my school.  We got a heads up on the 21st that there would be a journo from the Irish Examiner (Niall Murray) there, as well as Paschal Sheehy along with an RTE camera.

I arrived in school about 11 AM to find the Journalist there already along with an examiner photographer and the RTE cameraman.  All very exciting, and a little bit nerve wracking.

The whole process is actually very interesting.  Niall Murray went around to all the staff who were happy to talk to him, and did his interview thing, using shorthand.   Really, I have never seen anyone using shorthand for real.  A little bit of witchcraft right there.

Along with Niall Murray was Denis Minihane, the Examiner photographer for the day.  He took hundreds of photographs.

And lets not forget RTE.  Their camera man took around about 45 minutes of footage, including one interview with yours truly.

So.  What did all this lead?

Niall Murray distilled his 8 or 9 interviews down to this article.  Quite a skill to take thousands of words and summarise the main ideas you’re after.

Denis Minihane’s photographs?  One of them ended up in this article.  That strikes me as a hard way to earn a living.  He also gave a few of us a chance to give a little speech on video, and some of that is in the first article linked.

And RTE?  Paschal Sheehy impressed us with his ability to interview in two languages.  The Irish language interviews were aired on TG4 and Nuacht.  But as for the English language interviews?  Not on the RTE news.  There was a 5 second clip of us picketing the school gate, but no interview.  That was saved for the Radio news.  So there you have it.  Even RTE thinks I have a face for radio.