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Prospective Students - Graduate Profiles - Communications and Journalism

Prospective Students

Graduate Profiles - Communications and Journalism

prospective students
Graduate Profiles - Communications and Journalism

Every day, you are likely to encounter the work of former graduates of DCU School of
Communications. In front of camera or behind it, on-mike or off, on the front page or at the
editing desk, our graduates help our society tell its stories. Many of them are the editors,
producers and directors who select those stories. Others are the reporters, screen-writers, publicists
and designers who shape them. Below are just a sample of the varied, fascinating career paths that our graduates have followed.

 

A lucky break in her INTRA work placement secured Helen O'Rahilly, B.A. in Communication Studies,  a researcher job on RTE's main current affairs programme Today Tonight and, on graduation, RTE hired her. In 1988, after 2 years, she left RTE and joined BBC in Birmingham. During this time, she trained as a film director both at the BBC and at independent TV companies such as Diverse and Clark in London. Helen joined the features department of the BBC in London in 1992 to work on Watchdog. From 1993 she worked her way up to be a producer, series producer, deputy editor and finally editor of the series in 1997. By 1999 she was running 78 live shows a year for BBC One and in June 1999, after 11 years in Britain, Helen returned to RTE as director of TV. A year later, in March 2000, the BBC headhunted her for a creative directorship, running the factual content for its new digital TV channels. In October 2001 she was promoted to channels executive for BBC TV senior management. Custer's Last Stand Up, the BBC/RTE children's drama co-production she commissioned while director of TV at RTE, won a BAFTA award in 2002 - the first academy award for an RTE-associated programme.
Noel Curran, B.A. in Communication Studies, was appointed managing director of television at RTÉ in September 2003, with responsibility for all programming areas of television. Noel joined RTÉ in 1992 and during his time in RTÉ, he has worked as a reporter, producer and editor and most recently as the editor of current affairs in the news division. While editor of current affairs, Noel and his team won many awards, including two IFTA awards for ‘Cardinal Secrets’ and ‘Food for Thought’.

 

 

 

Caroline Morahan, BA in Communication Studies, is currently presenting the RTE 1 fashion programme, Off the Rails. She previously presented a quiz show for Network 2 called the Fame Game. Her work on the Fame Game involved preparing her scripts and interviewing all the contestants and guests to be featured on the show. The recording schedule was hectic with the series (twenty-three shows) recorded in six days. At Off the Rails, Caroline works to a three-week schedule where the items recorded on week one appear on television on week three. She spends half her week filming and the other half preparing scripts and researching. Caroline has been working as the Evening Herald fashion correspondent and social diarist for the last two years but she has taken a sabbatical from the paper while she adjusts to her role with Off the Rails.

Popular Irish comedian Ardal O'Hanlon's first introduction to prolific comic scriptwriting was the mock election campaign he and other budding stars, Barry Murphy, Kevin Gildea and Dermot Carmody, ran for the students’ union presidency while studying Communication Studies at DCU. In 1994, he won the coveted title of “Comedy Newcomer of the Year" for his ground-breaking performances as the hapless Father Dougal in acclaimed comedy series, "Father Ted". He currently stars in the BBC series, "My Hero", in which he plays a mild-mannered shopkeeper, who can transform into an unlikely superhero known as Thermoman. Ardal has also appeared on stage at the Gate Theatre in “See You Next Tuesday,” the dramatised English version of an original French film, and he is currently working on a book provisionally titled “Ragweed,” which follows his first successful venture into fictional writing, “Talk Of The Town,” which was published in 1998.

Ciara Fitzpatrick, BA in Communication Studies, is currently a producer for Sky Television. Ciara devises enhanced TV programming and strategy for the Sky Network - from David Blaine interactive to the Simpsons awards, as well as consulting externally on interactive TV projects such as Big Brother and Graham Norton. Previously, she won ‘Best Site Revamp of the Year Award’ from Online Tech News for her work in reshaping the online offering for O2. Ciara worked on the inception of interactive TV at ITV Digital, managing promotions for the interactive division. Before this, she looked after events and promotions for Hot Press Magazine.

Kevin Brannigan, BA in Communication Studies, is managing director of Learning Ireland, an educational publishing company that produces web-based information about adult education, evening classes and further learning in Ireland, Northern Ireland and the UK. Web sites include Nightcourses.com, Daycourses.com and CorporateTraining.ie. The company also produces the national guides to nightcourses, third level education and corporate training, the top selling courses guides each year. Learning Ireland also operates The National Education Database, which lists details of over 22,000 courses run around the country. Kevin instructs in radio broadcasting and media studies at The Dublin Media Centre, and regularly writes about broadcasting issues in Ireland for ‘Radio World’ and ‘The Radio Magazine’.


As Director of Radio at RTE, Journalism graduate Helen Shaw has responsibility for Radio 1, 2FM and Radio na Gaeltachta, and was instrumental in the establishment of classical music station Lyric FM. And all this despite being told by one of her lecturers that she didn't have a voice for radio. Showing their entrepreneurial spirit, she and some former classmates set up a news agency called Copyright. Later Helen worked for The Irish Times in Belfast as a reporter before returning to Dublin in 1988 to take up a post with RTE as a producer. As her radio career began to blossom, Helen retraced her steps and returned to Belfast to work for the BBC. She moved up the ladder and into a management position but returned to Dublin in 1997 to become RTE's Director of Radio.

Journalism
graduate, Matt Cooper became the youngest editor of a national newspaper in Ireland when he took over at the Sunday Tribune in 1996 aged just 30. His career started with a placement on Business & Finance magazine where, together with Susan O'Keeffe (who was to break the story on Granada television that led to the establishment of the Beef Tribunal) Cooper became one of the small team which helped O'Toole and three of her journalistic colleagues to launch the Sunday Business Post. Three hectic years later he left reluctantly for the Irish Independent and took up the appointment as business editor, where his business news stories elbowed their way onto the front page, such as the 1993 story on the Greencore sell-off. Matt became Editor of The Sunday Tribune in 1996, and was awarded the ESB National Media Awards Journalist of the Year 2001. Matt currently presents the drive-time favourite, The Last Word, on Today FM.
 

 
Journalism graduate, Beatrice Murail is a senior producer with the French for Africa section of the BBC World Service in London. Beatrice joined BBC Monitoring in 1993 as a sub-editor and later worked as a broadcast journalist on the Africa desk at BBC News Online. She received the 2003 United Nations Correspondents’ Association award, in the broadcast category, for a series of programmes on refugees.

Among the other noted journalists who have graduated from DCU are:

  • Seán Potts, deputy sports editor with the Evening Herald
  • Aideen Sheehan, is agriculture and food correspondent with the Irish Independent
  • Shane Coleman, political correspondent for The Sunday Tribune
  • Sylvia Thompson, Features Writer with The Irish Times
  • Aidan Fitzmaurice, sports journalist with the Evening Herald
  • Arthur Beesley, finance reporter with The Irish Times
  • David Murphy, Deputy Business Editor with the Irish Independent
  • Vincent Wall, editorial consultant for Business & Finance
  • Alan Soughley, editorial executive with Fintel Publications
  • Rory Carroll, Baghdad Correspondent, The Guardian
  • Tom Lyons, financial reporter with the Irish Independent
Ruth Croke, Film and Television Studies graduate, is the global PR and marketing manager for IDA Ireland, based in New York. She is responsible for IDA’s international branding, promotion and media relations in the US, Asia and Europe. Over the last four years, she has developed a vibrant marketing campaign promoting Ireland as a location for foreign investment. Ruth won the 2003 Creativity Award of Distinction in New York for her last advertising campaign for IDA. She has written a number of articles on Ireland and has been interviewed by many leading publications in America on Ireland’s economic development. Ruth is currently undertaking the global marketing campaign for IDA’s new strategy, based on the theme of ‘Knowledge – is in our Nature’. Prior to this post with IDA in New York, she worked for BBC Television in London.