IFAJ Web Feature For IFAJ/ACDC Partnership October 2007 Finding fascinating, moving, heart-breaking and hilarious stories in the most banal of topics By Maria Moynihan Irish Farmers Journal   (Note:  The Outstanding Irish Young Journalist for 2006 explains how she spotted, planned and wrote what became an honoured article about the diversity of rural families in Irish society.   Maria Moynihan received this award in Europe-wide competition from the European Commission in recognition of journalism that highlights diversity and workplace equality.  A native of Tralee, Co Kerry, she graduated from Dublin City University with a First Class Honours degree in Journalism.)             When I joined The Irish Farmers Journal two years ago, the news feature section had just been re-launched as The Journal under newly appointed editor Emmet Moloney. He had the vision of making The Journal the national newspaper of rural Ireland, which would cover the issues of the day from a countrywide perspective. Unfortunately- or fortunately for The Journal- many of the national newspapers tend to focus on Dublin and its surrounds in reportage, so there was a definite gap in the market for our product. And given the reaction and support amongst our readers, the message is getting through. Seeing a gap in national coverage             The award-winning article ‘The Irish Family- No Longer Nuclear?’ is a good example of our spirit. The idea came when I was covering the up-coming Census for the paper. A spokesperson had told me that one of the most important outcomes of the national survey forecasted was a clearer picture of the changing family structure in Ireland. While I had seen articles on teenage mothers, single fathers, mixed marriages, etc., I had never seen the issue covered from a rural perspective. Therefore, at our next editorial meeting I proposed a feature on the topic combining statistics, expert opinions and, most importantly, human voices sharing their experiences. Checking statistics and finding experts             The easiest part of the process was researching the statistical information that proved in black and white figures that the Irish family had evolved from the nuclear structure to a variety of forms. The 2002 Census: Household Composition & Family Units reports, Statistical Yearbook of Ireland 2005 and Economic and Social Research Institute’s report Family Formation in Ireland, proved particularly useful in finding relevant statistics, such as: One in eight people live in a one-parent family In 2002, co-habiting couples made up 8.4% of all family units, compared to 3.9% in 1996 32% of all births in 2005 were outside marriage The number of separated (including divorced) people grew from 87,800 in 1996 to 133,800 in 2002.             However, numbers were not enough. I needed somebody to interpret these changes and explain what they meant for Irish rural society. After much searching (I honestly don’t know what I’d do without Google) I found two experts qualified to speak on the topic.             The first was Karen Kiernan, Director of the One Family and a founding member of the Family Diversity Institute. She confirmed that Irish family life is changing, but made the point that society and state were not in tune with social reality, with the Constitution geared towards the traditional family. For example, she pointed out that if you live in a one- parent family in Ireland, you are three times more likely to live in poverty, while marital fathers have more rights and access to their children than non-marital. Ms. Kieran emphasized that if we were going to avoid future difficulties stemming from family diversity the government needed to overhaul legislation to make the needs and rights of the child a priority, regardless of the family structure.             Given Ms. Kiernan’s background in the diversity movement, I decided that I needed a neutral voice to balance the debate. Family life is certainly changing, but is this a good or a bad thing? Eventually, I made contact with Professor Tony Fahey of the ESRI, who was working on an overview of family life for the Department of Social and Family Affairs at that time. And while he acknowledged that there was a "lot of doom and gloom" about the changes in family life, he noted that every era has had its problems and there were a lot of positive trends. He posed an interesting question; which was worse, to be a married mother of seven children on a low-income or to be the single mother of one? Despite the changes in the family, he didn’t believe that family life was in decline, but was merely evolving. Greatest challenge - bringing the article to life             The combination of statistics and ‘talking heads’ was interesting, but I knew that to bring the article to life I really needed to interview families. This was my greatest challenge. Obviously, the family is a sacred structure and you have to deal sensitively when there are children involved, particularly if the new family is the product of a messy marriage break-up, shock pregnancy, etc. My first approach was to contact relevant support organisations (e.g. single fathers), but it proved fruitless with the exception of The Galway Teen Parent Support Programme, which put me in touch with Laura Kearns, an 18-year-old who had just had a baby boy.             Given the sensitivity of the case, I agreed to send a list of questions to the programme co-ordinator to give to Laura before I interviewed her so that she was at ease with the process, and to read back the article once I’d finished. I would never do this under normal circumstances, but because I was dealing with a teenage girl I didn’t want to take advantage of her. In any case, the interview went well and I didn’t have to change one word of the finished piece.             Regarding the other three interviews, I had to think outside the box a little. After ringing around various international support organisations and getting nowhere, I had the idea of calling Educate Together, a body that runs non-denominational, multi-cultural schools. As parents are central in the running of Educate Together, I figured that there would be an Irish parent who would have married internationally and would have decided to send their children to such a school. Sure enough, I was put in contact with the Daly-Martinos, an Irish-Chilean family who spoke to me about how they were raising their children in two cultures in the Midlands of Ireland. "Sometimes you can find the best stories close to home."             For the other two personal stories, I was lucky enough to draw on family contacts… my father is a very sociable person! He was able to put me in contact with Noel Hill, a man who had to battle the courts to get custody of his children after the breakdown of his marriage, and Malachy Kearns, one of the most renowned bodhrán makers in the world who found love and a second marriage with Gifty, a refugee from Ghana. Both men told their stories so powerfully and passionately that it really made the feature. I don’t know if I would have gotten these interviews had it not been through my family connection, but it just goes to show that sometimes you can find the best stories close to home. Pulling the pieces together             In terms of writing the feature, I decided to use Malachy’s story to start off the main piece, as more than anything it summed up the issue. I then listed the facts and figures to support the thesis, before adding the expert commentary. As that article was quite long at that stage (two pages), I decided to break up the remaining three personal stories into separate panels, which added variety to the design and the reading experience. I was happy with the finished product, though there always are things you like to tweak once it’s in print. However, I feel I did the best I could at that point to cover such a complicated issue.             A few months later, my editor sent me a press release about an EU journalism competition called "For Diversity, Against Discrimination." I thought the Irish family feature fit the theme, but kept putting it on the long finger until I emailed it off at the last minute on Christmas Eve. To be honest, I didn’t think much about it until I got a call at the end of February to say I’d won the EU Young Irish Journalist Award 2006. Something special I have taken from the experience             It was a great honour to get at this stage in my career, but I was also delighted that The Journal got the international recognition it deserved. I think the paper is very much the hidden gem of Irish journalism and that we have our finger on the pulse of rural Ireland where a lot of the nationals don’t. However, the article would have been nothing without the people who shared their stories with us, and I think the award was for them, too. I suppose if I’ve taken anything from the experience it’s that you can find the most fascinating, moving, heart-breaking and hilarious stories in the most banal of topics i.e. the Irish family. You just have to look that little bit closer. You can read this award-winning article here. (Note:  This professional development feature is provided through a partnership of IFAJ and the Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, University of Illinois.) TOP