work lives


used to picking up the slack. We all chip in when something comes up, but between press trips abroad and meetings down in Dublin, it’s me who’s away more than the rest of the family put together. Ultimately, I put the day job first, but the flexibility in what I do and the unsociable hours I work as a journalist


support my lifestyle. I love working for a news outlet right on the


frontier of a new era of reporting. All our journalists are given extensive training in social media, SEO and style, even if they have experience in these areas. We don’t see the web as an excuse to lower quality and take our standards very seriously. I think that’s what will make the difference in getting ahead in this new age of news. Our readers are a mixture of the young and old. The young naturally will flock to anything digital so, when my dad started reading AgriLand every day, I knew it was a news outlet worth taking seriously.


Farmers aren’t slow to tell you if you’re wrong


so you can never squeeze anything past them. I’m conscious I’m writing about “a day in the


life” but in truth I don’t have a daily routine. I try to get out of the office as much as


possible. Typical outings could be anything from a cattle sale to an economics briefing, a farm walk, a tour of a food processing factory or an agricultural show. Last month, I found myself out in the busiest field in Ireland for four days co-presenting our live coverage of the National Ploughing Championships, Europe’s largest agricultural show. I love that in the crazy world of journalism you could end up literally anywhere – and it’s no different in agricultural news. I love farming, particularly with livestock, but


have little experience inside a tractor cab. I spent the two weeks leading up to the show mulling over when to tell my boss I didn’t know a thing about ploughing. The show is the flagship for farming in Ireland and is attended by around 300,000 people so I knew it would be important. Luckily, despite its name, ploughing is just one of hundreds of things to see and the week was a complete success. Our live content from


the “ploughing” has been viewed more than 325,000 times so far. On one of the days, we opened the live show


with “tractor karaoke” at the young farmers’ stand. I was singing my heart out in the tractor with


rural youth organisation Macra na Feirme president James Healy and my colleague Sarah Delaney – but we didn’t realise until after that the mics hadn’t picked up the backing music! I’ve still a lot to learn, but I’m sure having fun doing it. Would I ever do anything else? I don’t think I could.


Rachel Martin is northern correspondent for farming news site AgriLand


News harvest


AgriLand was founded just over four years ago but has quickly become the largest farming news publisher on the island of Ireland. More than 300,000 people read the site


every month and its news app is the most downloaded faming app in Ireland – there have been 80,000 downloads to date. AgriLand employs 16 staff, including 12


journalists at its Dublin headquarters. The firm’s founder and managing director,


Cormac Farrelly, explains how he came up with the idea to take farming news online. He says: “Having grown up on a farm and


with a background in media, I saw that the agricultural industry had been left behind by the digital revolution. “AgriLand is run by a team of people


who are themselves farmers – it’s farmers providing a service for farmers. “Our aim is to inform farmers, but we


don’t tell them how to farm – we just keep them informed with the things they should be aware of to help them run their businesses. “We are conscious that farmers


should be as interested in what’s happening outside their farm gate as


inside the farm gate. “Arguably, what happens outside their farming enterprises has the biggest impact on their bottom line.”


theJournalist | 13


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