Barna native lands new gig in Newstalk revamp

She’s been a novelist, social diarist, political correspondent and regularly fills the large shoes of Vincent Browne – and now Galway native Sarah McInerney is set to tackle the world of radio.

The Barna native was announced as the new presenter of Newstalk’s drive-time radio show in a complete revamp of the station’s schedule, which sees her join the presenting team alongside the likes of Pat Kenny and George Hook.

While she hadn’t always envisaged a career in journalism, she always loved English and her ambition when she was younger was to write novels. By studying journalism in Dublin City University, she thought it would hopefully give her the chance to do just that.

However, this wasn’t the case and she was instead made report on current affairs and news stories instead. “I was a bit taken aback; our first lesson ever was use smaller words if you can rather than bigger words and I was devastated. As it turned out, it wasn’t what I meant to do but I really enjoyed it,” she said.

From there she landed a position with Sunday Tribune, where she started as a more creative writer, with a tongue-in-cheek piece social column called “Sarah in the City.”

“I spent two years going around to various high flying events in Dublin, looking at the rich, the wonderful and the gorgeous and writing about it.”

She quickly grew tired of venturing out on the town every night and gradually transitioned to general news stories.

Crime was something she never imagined doing but by the end of 2008 she was approached by publishers Gill Macmillan to develop one of her stories into a book.

The story was about a murder in the Dublin/Wicklow Mountains and the book was eventually published under the title “Where No One Can Hear You Scream.”

Then towards the end of 2008, Sarah was also approached by The Sunday Times and was asked to be the political correspondent for the newspaper.

“I hadn’t really any experience in covering politics because politics was so strongly covered at the Tribune. It was a big job for me to take and I wasn’t really given a choice to be honest and I saw it as a really big challenge.

“Of course three weeks later the banks collapsed. So I was on a steep learning curve from there on in. I loved it. Sort of like going from fiction to fact with journalism, I actually loved politics.”

From this point, her political career grew from strength to strength. She has appeared as a contributor for RTE, TV3 and Newstalk. She has even filled in as a guest presenter for Vincent Browne on his TV3 political show.

“No one can replace Vincent Browne; they are very, very big shoes to fill. My first time was terrifying but I got such a buzz out of it. I decided then that presenting was something I needed to start looking into because I really enjoyed it.”

When asked what her favourite type of journalism was, her response was simple.

“I don’t know, I love radio because no one is looking at you. TV brings in a whole other angle that you have to be conscious of. Where the camera is, where angles are, you have to look at cameras at various times etc.

“So it’s just the little added complications. It’s very hard to choose. I will always love print. I would not like to abandon it completely, that’s my natural home I think.”

The interview then switched to Sarah’s proudest moments in journalism. “The big political stories when you break them. The whole country is talking about the story it and you know they wouldn’t be talking about it unless you had found it out. Those moments don’t come that often but when they do they’re great,” Sarah said.

So what does the future bring for budding presenter? “Hopefully I’ll be regarded as a very successful radio broadcaster. If I could have the sort of success and career that Ivan Yates has had for example I’d be very happy with that.”

Speaking fondly of Galway, Sarah started that her busy schedule can make it difficult for her to travel back to her family home.

Working with The Sunday Times means her weekends are Sundays and Mondays make things more difficult for her and hampers her travelling home to only once every couple of months.

She describes her new radio show as lively mix of a very strong mix of news, current affairs and politics.

“There is also going to be the lighter things, we may look at movie reviews. Basically try and keep people entertained as well as informed. The whole idea is we will be catching people at the end of their day. They want to know what has happened during the day but they also want to be entertained as well.”

Sarah will be presenting her new show alongside Chris Donoghue and it will reach the airwaves this September.