The Friday View 10/02
Tripe + Drisheen turns two! A look back, and forward. Plus our round-up of news and events.
Welcome to The Friday View on Tripe + Drisheen. Thanks for subscribing and please help spread the word.
The Terrible Twos
So, after all the sleepless nights and teething problems, it’s toddlerhood for Tripe + Drisheen: how time flies! We first launched this squealing banbh of a newsletter on February 11, 2021.
Year one was a scramble, a lot of figuring out and a lot of trust-building and trying different things.
In our second year, we’ve covered a breath-taking array of topics, increased our news coverage, launched our popular Arts + Culture and Lives Less Ordinary sections, paid every single other writer we’ve worked with a fair price, filed numerous Freedom of Information requests, and even had our first work experience student.
Unfortunately, Year Two of Tripe + Drisheen has coincided with a deepening cost of living crisis and many more financial worries for a lot of people. I’m noticing a worrying trend: while our free sign-ups are now increasing rapidly and exponentially, and while it’s great to know we’re reaching ever more people, our paid subscriptions have slowed down.
This is pretty alarming. Although we’ve been able to pay freelancers occasionally, we have nowhere near the budget we’d like to have to be able to, say, pay one full-time and one part-time staff member, which is where we want to be. Our coverage and the range of topics and ideas you’ll be able to encounter in this fledgling publication will expand and diversify only if we have the funds to pay for more writers.
It’s an open secret here at T+D that we don’t paywall our stories and instead operate a model a little like The Guardian or Wikipedia or US science podcast Radiolab: we ask people to contribute, but we want it to be accessible to all because we don’t believe good information should be hard to come by.
We’d love to be able to prove that this model can work on a local level, with the good people of Cork supporting it.
We want to be ad-free because we believe it’s the most independent way of producing media, and we believe that most readers are sick of being inundated with ads.
So if you have been a free sign-up for a while and find you are reading a lot of Tripe + Drisheen, or if you are a regular reader via the web page and haven’t signed up yet, it would be amazing if you would consider upgrading to a paid subscription for €8 per month. Just hit this button:
Or if that’s not possible, and we do understand that for a lot of people right now it’s not, we usually have a button for one-off contributions via Stripe at the bottom of our articles that looks like this:
If you do these things, you’ll be able to help us celebrate all over again in another year’s time.
-Ellie
Two Good, Hard Years
On February 11 2021, during one of the many lockdowns Tripe + Drisheen quietly launched with a long read on dereliction and vacancy. Two years later we’re still publishing a mix of long reads, local news, arts features, profiles, op-eds as well as the Friday View, our weekly round-up of news and events, all delivered to the inbox of thousands of readers throughout Cork and across the world.
For nearly as long as I have been back in Ireland, I’ve been involved in Tripe + Drisheen. The origin story is something we’ve been over a few times - in true Cork fashion we published a manifesto quite early on, so I won’t bore you with the details (again). But, with Tripe + Drisheen our aim is quite simple, and not all that novel: to spend time reporting local stories to give readers a fuller understanding of the news and issues that are shaping our city and county. (And without bombarding you with ads!)
Hopefully, you can think of plenty examples where we’ve accomplished that, but just in case you can’t, here are a few examples: Carrigtwohill's future: thriving community or soulless sleeper town?; The octopus that nearly strangled Cork; Toy Story: The second life of Cork's unwanted teddy bears.
Without getting all Oscar-y, I’d like to thank all our readers, and especially the T+D subscribers who help keep our publication afloat. Also, a very, very BIG thanks to my colleague Ellie who’s been monumental and instrumental throughout. Do help spread the word about Tripe + Drisheen and also don’t be shy about dropping us a line. Here’s to more anniversaries and a lot more reporting on local news in Cork.
-JJ
News in brief
A tale of two universities. On Tuesday, the big wigs at UCC launched the university’s five year masterplan in a live web broadcast. Meanwhile across town, MTU was dealing with a major IT breach that led to the university being shut down all this week. While the events at both universities are not at all the same, what’s striking is how different the approach the two universities have taken in sharing news and information.
“Securing our Future” UCC’s five-year plan is full of fairly boilerplate stuff: the usual emphasis on being student centred, inclusive, offering an outstanding student experience (was there ever a university that didn’t offer these learning experiences?)
Of note is the UCC’s eye on international rankings. These matter as it’s about the first thing that comes up when international students Google a university’s name. UCC wants to significantly up its game in this regard. (In case you’re interested, the university is ranked 301-350 in the Times Higher Education World University Ranking for 2022). UCC plays an outsize role in the city and county, and the next five years will see significant changes: the business school will relocate to the city centre bringing with it new life to a building that has been vacant for nearly 15 years as well as a new dental hospital and school will be built in Curaheen.
Meanwhile, MTU was initially giving very little away about the cyber attack which was first detected on Saturday, February 4. The first interview to the media was not until Thursday, February 09, by which time MTU had been closed for three days. Paul Gallagher, VP for finance and administration at MTU, provided more information about the breach and the fact that a ransom ransom demand had been found. That interview came on the back of an RTÉ report on Wednesday evening that no one from the college was being made available to talk to the media.
Could one difference between the two universities be that UCC has an onsite media team, and MTU doesn’t?
Out + About
🎬Oscar worthy: Irish-language Oscar contender An Cailín Ciúin (The Quiet Girl) is screening every Sunday in February at the Triskel Arts Centre. It’s a return to the Triskel for director Colm Bairéad whose debut feature has been sweeping the board at international film festivals. It’s a beautifully shot, quite tale of resilience. You can read our review of An Cailín Ciúin from last year here. Tickets and information here.
Time, date, place: 12pm, every Sunday in February, The Triskel, Tobin Street
🚶♀️Blackpool Walkers meet every Wednesday afternoon outside Blackpool Church on the northside of the city. The community walks are open to all and there’s no charge to join. Anyone interested in attending is asked to contact Community Health Worker Liz Madden 087-6977942 first. They also have a number of events organised for the coming months, including joining up with Mayfled Walkers, a banks of the River Lee walk and and guided heritage walk.
Time, date, place: 2pm, every Wednesday, meeting outside Blackpool Churcj
🎸Back in a tracksuit: The Sultans of Ping kick off their two-night stint at the Opera House tonight (Friday 10). Despite having played pretty much everywhere in the city, the Sultans have never played the Opera House. No doubt this will be a historic footnote on their Wiki page. Ahead of the gigs, Ellie talked with frontman Niall O’Flaherty about the homecoming gigs, starting out, PVC and much else. You can read that interview here. As of publishing time there were still a handful of tickets available for the Friday night gig.
Time, date, place: 8pm, Feb 10 &11, Cork Opera House
🎵A tour is born: This weekend sees experimental outfit Fixity kick off their mini European tour in Cork with a gig at Plugd. Led by Cork composer and drummer Dan Walsh, Fixity consists of a revolving line-up of musicians. The Cork gig however will be a solo show. Next stop is Anseo in Dublin and then further afield. Dan is well-known in Cork and is busy with a few different acts: on saxophone with The Bonk, a drummer with Junior Brother, and one half of experimental electronic duo Senior Infant. More information and tickets here.
Time, date, place: 7pm, Saturday February 11, Plugd, Cornmarket Street
🌳Dig in, tidy up: For residents of St Luke’s, a group of local volunteers will be meeting this Saturday on the site of the old quarry to work on the neighbourhood community garden. Meeting time is 11am, and if you have gloves or litter pickers you are asked to bring them along. We profiled the local volunteer group who have turned the dumping ground into a community garden in a piece last summer which you can read here.
Time, date, place: 11am - 1pm, Saturday February 11, St Luke’s Community Garden, Ballyhooly Road.
🎶Everybody sing now: This coming Saturday afternoon, Emmet Square will be filled with the sound of love songs. The community sing-a-long kicks off at 2pm and everyone and anyone is invited - all ages and all abilities. Think of carolling but with love songs. Singer and performer Ivy Favier will be leading the sing-a-long and some of the ballads that will be performed include “Lean on Me”, “Stand by Me” and “Can you feel the love tonight?” There will be printsouts going around with the words to help you sing your heart out. More information here.
Time, date, place: 2pm, Saturday February 11, Emmet Place
This week on T+D
On Tuesday, Ellie wrapped up her month-long car-free diary series this week with a few reflections (in Ireland bike, bus and rail travel takes a great deal of time and planning), recommendations (invest in rail travel) and thoughts on what to do when a fight breaks out on public transport (you'll have to read that part yourself:)
On Thursday, we reported on the opening of Ireland South MEP Grace O’Sullivan’s new constituecny office on Washington Street in Cork city.
ICYMI: Ellie’s long read from last weekend was on a newly published book on Bessborough by Michael Dwyer, a senior researcher for the Mother and Baby Homes Commission. But, as Ellie writes, “can the full truth ever really be unearthed?” You can read the piece in full here.
That’s it for this week’s Friday View. Any tips, news or events you’d like to share with Tripe+Drisheen, you can contact us via our About page here. We are always happy to speak to people off the record in the first instance, and we will treat your information with confidence and sensitivity. Get in touch.