The Chinese Limerick Leader
It's interesting times in regional newspapers around the country at the moment. They tend to have the reputation "up in Dublin" of being traditional, old-fashioned, dull and "provincial" in the derogative sense.
But you get a real glimpse of the changing nature of multicultural Ireland in their sports pages, where the rising young stars in GAA and soccer have names that seem to come from the other side of the planet.
In Lucan, for instance, the Lucan Gazette has been following what's been dubbed the "United Colours of Lucan" team. They're mostly under-14s, mostly hurling, and the future stars of GAA. What am I saying? They ARE stars already, our local heroes.
It hit me too when I was working in a new paper in the Midlands a couple of years back - the amount of young black faces and Eastern European names in an eight-page "Back to school" gallery I was doing. And before you say EIGHT pages, remember that this was a regional - picture galleries are a real staple of local papers, and it's in the picture spreads that this multicultural change becomes so clear, in the young faces from the schools and playgroups and junior sports teams.
The Limerick Leader has gone a step further again, with its "Ethnic Limerick Feature". After the success of its Polish column, it's nowng up its pages to African and Chinese columnists. And Russian (lots of Russians around the Shannon).
You get a good idea of all these grassroots changes at a very local level, on a week-by-week basis, drip by drip, in the tiniest of stories, in the schools and societies and sports clubs. The national press, by comparison, is lagging waaaay behind - it's almost like a different country.
Posted by mick cunningham at April 26, 2005 01:20 PM | Email a friend this entry
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