UNIVERSITY of Limerick has appointed former editor of The Kerryman and Managing Director of The Irish Daily Star, Ger Colleran, as Adjunct Professor of Journalism.

Mr Colleran lived in Ballymac when he was editor of The Kerryman newspaper from 1994 to 1999. He then moved to Dublin to become editor of The Star and later Managing Editor.

He is a graduate of University of Limerick where he received an MBA in 1993 and Harvard Business School in Boston. He is currently in his second year of law studies at Kings Inns.

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A TV3 presenter and newspaper columnist, Mr Colleran played a central role in the political negotiations on the new Defamation Act. He will give master classes to UL’s Journalism and New Media students as part of his new role.

“The one thing young student journalists need to set aside is the cloud of fear that has hit the media industry over the past 10-15 years because of the massive disruption caused by digital. Technology is merely a delivery vehicle; the basic human demand for stories doesn’t change at all,” he said.

“Whether it’s stone tablets from Mount Sinai; gossip at the end of the medieval village; print; telephone; television or digital; it is immaterial. People are still interested in stories about people and the world around them. The delivery vehicles may alter, but there are certain basic standards that need to be upheld: accuracy and integrity; and the need to challenge and question. That sort of rigour needs to be encouraged,” Mr Colleran continued.

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“I would encourage students to be platform agnostic while constantly keeping an eye on the prize and the prize is a more decent, open, democratic living society, unafraid of vested interests, power centres and elites,” he added.

Speaking about his new appointment Mr Colleran, whose daughter is also a UL graduate, said he had “decades’-long admiration for the University of Limerick. I completed an MBA there and I have an association with the college through family”.

RTE presenter Bryan Dobson is a current Adjunct Professor of Broadcast Journalism at UL. Previous Adjunct Professors of Journalism include former Irish Times Editor Geraldine Kennedy and Sunday Times journalist Justine McCarthy.