Aoife Moore
If Sunday Times Ireland editor Nóirín Hegarty was disappointed to lose hack Mark Tighe to the Sindo, she has recovered some ground by nabbing pol corr Aoife Moore from the Examiner.
Moore’s arrival into the Aawrish edition of the Sunday Times should generate plenty of interest, considering she recently initiated defamation proceedings in the High Court against two former columnists from its biggest rival, the Sindo.
These are Gwen Halley and her husband, former senator Eoghan Harris, who operated pseudonymous Twitter accounts that Moore claims defamed her.
There’s more change afoot at the Sindo as Indo features ed, Liz Kearney, is moving to the Sunday paper.
She is taking over Fran Power’s recently-vacated position as editor of the People & Culture supplement, much to the chagrin of long-time Sindo denizens with a hopeful eye on the job.
Kearney will have a lot to live up to, as Mediahuis publisher Peter Vandermeersch is a fan of the rather pedestrian supplement. When it first launched 18 months ago, he declared it to be “now overshadowing the rest of the Sindo.”
Power has now left the position as editor of the paper’s golden child. But not before giving her husband Dave Robbins a large spread for his interview with Guardian columnist George Monbiot about his new buke about, er, soil.
Tighe’s recent move to the Sindo is also intriguing, as he and the Sunday Times Ireland are the subjects of a libel action taken by Stephen Rae. The former editor-in-chief of Independent News & Media (INM) before it was taken over by Mediahuis is suing over a story written by Tighe, based on documents read by the judge when the ODCE applied to have High Court inspectors appointed to investigate INM affairs. Rae claimed these documents were not privileged as they had not been read out in court (see The Phoenix, 16/12/21).
With such exciting inhouse and inter-paper shenanigans at play, it looks like staff-related stories could rival anything the Sunday Times Ireland and Sindo publish.
