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Meet the
Eva Short Eva Short is a reporter with the Sunday Business Post. Previously, the TCD graduate worked as a journalist with Silicon Republic and The Phoenix Magazine, before freelancing as a content writer and editor with Reach plc.
How did you get into journalism? I always liked storytelling; my mother tells me that I used to mock up front pages of stories about my stuffed animals when I was young! I studied English in college and during that time joined one of the student newspapers, Trinity News. I also did a bit of freelancing for RTÉ radio, wrote album and gig reviews for GoldenPlec, and reviewed films for Totally Dublin. I got the RTÉ gig when a researcher found my student journalism work online; the other gigs I just applied to myself using my student journalism as samples. Free gig tickets and movie
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screenings, what more could a broke student want? After college, I got internships with Newstalk and the Irish Times; not placements, I just stuck my neck out and asked two people I knew who worked in those places, and they agreed. Then, I got my first job in Silicon Republic, and the rest is (relatively recent) history!
How do you think the profession is evolving? Our industry unfortunately still has no idea how to contend with the rise of the internet, and how that has impacted all facets of our profession; how we deliver news, what we report on, who reads it
and its perceived value. So obviously it’s all only going to get more digital; I can’t possibly summarise the various impacts that will have, but those impacts will be considerable. Subscription models have been floated as the way to counteract the bottom falling out of advertising revenue, but I think time is running out on that too; people have so many subscriptions and are already pulling away from that model due to the expense of paying a certain amount for access to a number of individual publications. I think services like Apple News will become more common, more one-stop shops, but I’m hopeful these services won’t solely be provided by ‘big tech’.
