As I’m sure most media-watchers in Ireland are aware, the Sunday Business Post newspaper recently exited an examinership process. The court appointed examiner from Grant Thornton managed to find a new owner for the company and has secured its future in the short to medium term.
Today, the creditor’s meeting was held at which people owed money by the paper would find out how much they would actually get. As is normal with such things, the Revenue Commissioners and Dublin City Council got all their money, while lesser creditors of various classes got proportionally less.
As a freelance journalist who works with the Sunday Business Post a lot, it looks like I will get 15 per cent of what I’m actually owed. (For a variety of reasons, I actually hadn’t written that much for the paper in the period concerned, so I wasn’t owed that much. It was still a sizable sum of money but less than some are owed and more than others.)
One part of me can’t help but feel an injustice at not getting fairly paid for work that was done and delivered to a high level of professionalism . . . but another part is just extremely glad that the paper is surviving.
If my contribution to its survival is a couple of hundred euro, then I think that’s a price that’s well worth paying and I’m happy to pay it.
The Sunday Business Post is staffed by a great group of people and has broken some fantastic stories over the years. I’ve worked for it for approximately 19 years and think it’s a genuinely important fixture in the Irish media world.
We would be poorer off as a society without it.
Onwards and upwards.
alexmeehan.com 