Some Changes in the Newsroom

You might have noticed that we put out a call for a city reporter to join our team recently.

That’s because, sadly, one of our reporters, Damien Murphy, has decided to leave Dublin Inquirer. Not because I’ve created a hostile work environment, he assures me. It was his first journalism job, and he’s decided that it’s just not for him.

We’re hoping that he still writes for us every now and then, but wish him luck in the future! And we’ll introduce his replacement in a couple of weeks.

In the meantime, we’ve started to get our first crowdsourced questions from our readers through our We Are Hearken module that you might have noticed in our sidebar. It’s great to get some fresh ideas and learn more about what our readers care about. We’ve started work on the first of those suggestions.

As well as our regular columnists, we’ve had quite a few special op-eds over the past few months, from planners, to councillors, to transport experts. That’s part of a strategy to increase the diversity of voices that we publish – and something that we’re looking to grow.

This week, for example, we’ve lined up an article from a Pakistani journalist in Lahore, who’ll offer some context for why there has been a rise in the number of Pakistani asylum seekers to Europe. (You might have caught a few articles on the subject in recent months in Irish newspapers, most of them with a conspicuous lack of Pakistani voices.)

Finally, as part of our effort to spread the word offline and have a bit of fun, we’re holding our first Dublin Inquirer pub quiz, this coming Wednesday at 7.30pm at the Beerhouse on Capel Street. As members, admission is free for you! There’ll be a special Dublin Inquirer news round, for local news geeks. We hope you can make it.