As part of our regular series of interviews with publishers, read on to find out more about Justin McCarthy, Editor and CEO of the Irish Farmers Journal.

What attracted you to the news publishing business?

My route to becoming Editor of the Irish Farmers Journal and CEO of The Agricultural Trust is quite an unorthodox one. Having grown up on a family farm, my first love has always been the agriculture sector. Suffering from dyslexia, I could never have envisaged that I would have ended up in my current position.  After University, I started working in the meat industry. It was a fantastic education in business discipline, the importance of production efficiencies and the need to continually innovate. In my role as CEO, these same disciplines are as relevant to running a media publishing business as a beef processing factory. When it comes to my role as Editor, I have a very simple rule. Our job is to distil and translate information into a format that our readers can easily understand. Success is where we make complicated stuff simple. The buzz of seeing the information we produce make a difference to the lives of our readers is as strong today as it was 15 years ago when I started work with the Irish Farmers Journal. 

What’s the most exciting thing happening in news publishing internationally right now?

The most exciting thing happening in the industry right now has to be the extent to which both publishers and customers are realising that good content has a value. We have always taken the view in both the Irish Farmers Journal and The Irish Field that we charge for our content whether it was consumed in print or online. It was a lonely place to be initially and there were times when you would be tempted to drop the paywall. However, after five to six years of making plenty of mistakes, we are now seeing our digital platforms making a strong financial contribution to the business and actually complementing our print products. I think the industry is realising that the future is based on investing in the capacity to produce high quality unique content that consumers value on whatever platform they decide to consume it.  

Current challenges facing news publishers?

Our business continues to rely heavily on retail sales. In terms of the number of individual paper sales, every week we have to fill Croke Park. The 4,500 shops that sell our titles each week are a key part of this distribution chain. The reduced prominence of newspapers in some of these outlets is a concern. One of the biggest challenges in addressing this is the inability to build a reader subscription model due to the prohibitive cost of postage. This is certainly one area where the government could provide assistance to the industry. Meanwhile, on the digital side, publishers who adopt a paywall-model have a big job of work to do in demonstrating the value of a targeted audience over and above a mass audience. An eyeball behind a paywall is the equivalent to bringing someone into your showroom. The alternative is putting a sign on the motorway and viewing success on the basis of how many people that simply drive by.

What’s next for your publication/ Any exciting news you’d like to share?

Continuous innovation is core to the future of our business, not just in terms of digital but also across print. We have introduced a number of new technologies over the past 12 months that have helped us bring our print products to life and keeps our brands in front of our readers. This has undoubtedly helped drive print circulation growth in the Irish Farmers Journal, at a record pace throughout 2020 and into 2021. Meanwhile, we are continuing to develop our digital platforms with a number of new developments planned in the coming months.

What is your most memorable or favourite news moment/story in the past year?  

I am hugely proud of how our teams across the business ensured we continued to support our readers through the challenges of Covid-19. It is almost a year now since we have had any significant presence in our office with staff scattered out across all 32 counties. Despite this, we have managed to produce some great news content and technical articles. But my most memorable story has to be the weekly reader picture stories we have run in the paper throughout the pandemic. It has given a unique insight into how family farms are dealing with the challenges of Covid-19 and how it is impacting on their lives. It will serve as a fantastic archive for future generations.