Journalism Episodes

What's Sherlock Holmes doing in New York's most Fenian pub? That's the intrigue at the heart of Terror From America: A Sherlock Holmes Adventure, the debut novel from journalist and historian Terry Golway, and the question Irish Stew podcast cohosts Martin Nutty and John Lee set out to answer before a packed, raucous house at Ernie O'Malley's on the first of June. A Staten Island native with a Ph.D. in U.S. history from Rutgers and two decades of political reporting at the New York Observer, ...

John Connell traveled far from Ireland in his 20s, and early in his career, his work yielded accolades in journalism and filmmaking. Yet happiness and contentment proved to be elusive. Returning to the family farm in Longford, one of Ireland's heartland counties, provided a restorative space to pursue a career as an author. Three books followed, notably The Cow Book, which achieved critical acclaim; despite those successes, the way forward became unclear until an extended trip on the Camino de ...

In New York for the annual New York New Belfast Conference, Máirtín Ó Muilleoir swung by the Irish Stew Global Headquarters for a transatlantic conversation with co-host John Lee. In this episode, the Belfast Media Group and Irish Echo publisher tells of growing up during The Troubles, watching gun battles on his Belfast street, his move into politics, the less-than-warm reception he got as a Sinn Féin Belfast City Councillor, the superpower he discovered during his eventful year as the Lord Ma...

With a computer programming background and an instinct for reporting, Malachy Browne is on the vanguard of a new form of data-driven news coverage that is revitalizing journalism. Co-founder and enterprise director of the New York Times Visual Investigations team, Malachy is pioneering the use of digital sleuthing, collecting and analyzing troves of video and audio, satellite images and other data, and creating 3-D reconstructions of crime scenes and geopolitical events to hold the powerful to ...

Growing up in The Troubles in Northern Ireland, Jane Ferguson spent most of her life reporting on the global troubles in Yemen, Somalia, Sudan, Iraq, Gaza, Syria, and Afghanistan, reporting for CNN International, Al Jazeera, PBS Newshour, The New Yorker and other outlets, always finding the human stories in inhuman wars and all revealed in her unflinching new memoir No Ordinary Assignment. The least surprising part of her memoir is when she wins the George Polk Award, an Emmy Award, and an Al...

For Dublin’s own David Clinch, media is serious business. He’s been working on the front lines of innovative journalism and the complete overhaul of the news business for the past 30 years. He jokes that he’s been called “the Zelig of the media,” an “accidental journalist” popping up in key roles at the companies driving the changing media landscape, including ITN News in London, CNN where he helped manage the CNN International Desk in Atlanta and pioneered the use of social media for internati...

A Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist, Barbara Walsh started her career in Galway as a newspaper photographer and has gone on to work for newspapers and magazines in Florida, Massachusetts, Maine, and New Hampshire. While at the Lawrence Eagle-Tribune, Barbara reported on the notorious murderer William Horton Jr. and Massachusetts’ flawed prison furlough system, a series that played a crucial role in the U.S. Presidential election where George H. W. Bush defeated Massachusetts governor Michael ...

It wasn’t planned this way, but we recorded our episode with writer Brian McDonald on Sept. 11, a date that looms large in his new book Five Flights Up, which traces the Irish American story of four generations of the Feehan family in the Fire Department of New York, the FDNY, a story which would tragically culminate with the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. From the days just after the horse-drawn firetruck, to the devastation of the 1970s when the Bronx was burning, to the unspea...

Flor MacCarthy was born in West Cork and shares memories of one of Ireland's most idyllic regions. Her childhood was one rich in the indulgence of curiosity, filled with books, history, and fueled by a Russophile father. A Trinity College degree in French and Art History led unexpectedly to a career in journalism. Flor worked for 16 years at RTE, Ireland's national broadcaster, reporting on both domestic and international news. Following her successful career at RTE, Flor took up the position ...

Our new season of Irish Stew opens with trailblazing journalist Mark Little, a former RTÉ newscaster working to make sense of social media. Coming from a family where there was a daily scrum over who got the newspaper first, armed with “premature cynicism” and blessed with an insatiable curiosity for what made the world work, journalism beckoned and after graduating Trinity College he landed a job with RTÉ, Ireland’s national broadcaster. In this episode he shares stories from his “eyewitn...

Liza Donnelly: New Yorker Cartoonist & “Very Funny Ladies” Irish Stew’s favorite cartoonist is back to tell you about her just-published book, Very Funny Ladies: an in-depth celebration of women cartoonists who have graced the pages of the famous magazine from the Roaring Twenties to the present day. And you learn that somewhere between way back then and now a gender gap opened up at the magazine as women cartoonists disappeared from its pages, a gap finally bridged by Liza and two other w...

Despite growing up with no TV in a rural upstate hamlet, Kristen Shaughnessy would go on to become a fixture in New York TV news as reporter and anchor with the 24-hour news station New York 1. Kristen was on the frontlines of the non-stop news coverage of the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center and she takes us back to the grim reality that emerged that fateful day, sharing poignant details and discussing the journalistic challenges of reporting on this unprecedented tragedy. We talk ab...

From when her mother gave her a book of James Thurber’s cartoons, Liza Donnelly has expressed her wit and rising political consciousness through pencils, pens, watercolors, and now through her live drawing on an iPad at the Oscars, the Democratic National Convention, other marquee events for CBS.

Shaunagh Connaire is an award winning journalist who has reported from some of the most challenging and troubled spots on the globe. In her most recent venture, a podcast called Media Tribe, she has shifted her focus towards highlighting the work of critically acclaimed journalists and media executives, providing a forum to tell the story behind the story Shaunagh will be Irish Stew's guest on the first episode of season 2. For more on Irish Stew, please visit: https://www.irishstewpodcast.com