Gavan Reilly: A thank you note to a local media hero

As an almost-middle-aged adult there are certain staging posts by which you measure your life. Maybe it’s World Cups, or Olympics, or All-Irelands, or (as is often the case in my life) where you were living, or the job you were in, at general elections.

One of mine is the news, on September 1st 2005, that Seán Boylan was stepping down as manager of the Meath footballers. His tenure was literally all that I’d known – he’d been manager for three years longer than I’d been alive – and the news was so epochal that, having gone up to Dublin househunting for my second year in UCD, I ended up sitting in a communal computer lab listening to LMFM as the news was dissected.

All of which means that, on one of those days where you wake as a naive child and go to sleep as an older and more philosophical soul, the memories are ingrained with the voice of Michael Reade taking calls on LMFM.

Even having worked in national media for over a decade, I’m always still blown away by how much people still view the world through their local outlets. Half the time if Royal visitors spot me in Leinster House I’m not greeted as “himself from the news”, it’s, “I do read you in the Chronicle (so I do)”. In four years working in national radio news, the time I got the most local feedback was when my reports from Washington were played out on LMFM.

It’s that kind of experience that just cements the importance of local media, and how dearly those outlets are loved by all of us, even if we’ve upped sticks for elsewhere.

So, while he’s here to see it for himself: Michael, for all the calls you’ve taken, the interviews you’ve done, the voices you’ve showcased, the feet you’ve held to fires… thank you.