about ronan

Jour­nal­ist, author and broad­caster Ronan Casey wears glasses. The printed word has been cours­ing through his veins from a (very) young age when he started wear­ing glasses, and over the years he has con­tributed fre­quently to just about every news­pa­per and mag­a­zine in the coun­try, includ­ing The Irish Inde­pen­dent, The Irish Times, The Star, Sun­day World, Irish Daily Mir­ror, Irish Sun, Irish Daily Mail, Hot Press, Star on Sun­day, Sun­day Mir­ror, Sun­day Peo­ple, News of the World, Irish World and the Mail on Sunday.

Ronan wrote the best-selling biog­ra­phy of the late Joe Dolan for Pen­guin, which was released in Ire­land and the UK on hard­back in Novem­ber 2008 to much crit­i­cal acclaim. After five print runs on hard­back, a paper­back was released in July 2009 with a fur­ther re-issue in 2010. A South African release is still being talked about, and its still fly­ing off the book­shelves in airports.

Cur­rently con­tribut­ing to ‘Break­fast with Hec­tor’ on RTE 2 FM Ronan has ful­filled a life­long ambi­tion of read­ing news­pa­pers for a liv­ing. A devo­tee of the regional press, he brings the best sto­ries to air every Tues­day morn­ing on ‘Medium Sized Town — Fairly Big Story’. Still free­lanc­ing for who­ever will print his stuff, Ronan is also the Pub­lic Rela­tions, Mar­ket­ing and Book­ings man­ager for Grouse Lodge Ltd, the com­pany behind the award-winning Grouse Lodge Record­ing Stu­dios, the Nation­al­Wax Museum Plus, Sun & Apollo Stu­dios, But­ton Fac­tory, Sound Train­ing Cen­tre and more besides.

As Arts Edi­tor and Senior Jour­nal­ist with the Celtic Media Group, Ronan had full respon­si­bil­ity for the arts, musi­cal and cul­tural cov­er­age for five news­pa­pers across three regions. He was the chief writer with its flag­ship news­pa­per, the West­meath Exam­iner, for eight years.

How­ever, his expe­ri­ence in the media world extends beyond the printed word. For many years he has worked with a num­ber of radio and tele­vi­sion sta­tions and is cur­rently a mem­ber of the RTÉ News Panel. He has worked and appeared on tele­vi­sion shows as diverse as ‘Seoige’, ‘Karl Spain Wants to Rock’, ‘Nation­wide’, and the show that should have been a movie — ‘Into the Blue with Derek Davis’. On radio he has worked exten­sively for RTÉ, New­stalk 106 and Mid­lands 103.

For RTÉ Radio, Ronan has sole respon­si­bil­ity for the sta­tions annual cov­er­age of the pres­ti­gious RTÉ All-Ireland Drama Fes­ti­val — the pre­miere com­pe­ti­tion for Irish drama groups. This entails report­ing, review­ing pro­duc­tions and fix­ing guests for the Ronan Collins, Derek Mooney and Mar­ion Fin­u­cane Shows and prepar­ing up-to-the-minute reports for rte.ie, aer­tel and the RTÉ Guide.

Ronan is a reg­u­lar guest on ‘Morn­ing Ire­land’ and point of con­tact for mid­lands and west­ern news events with the early morn­ing radio team. He has also writ­ten and sourced visu­als and guests for other news shows and stu­dio debates and works closely with Mid­lands Cor­re­spon­dent Cia­ran Mul­looly. He was also an on-air tele­vi­sion and radio guest dur­ing RTÉ’s Gen­eral Elec­tion cov­er­age in 2002 and 2007, and reported live for them from the Local Elec­tion counts in 2004 and 2009 and at assorted tedious ref­er­en­dums in 2008, 2004, 2002 and 2001.

In 2008, he was appointed to the 12-person judg­ing panel of media pro­fes­sion­als for the 2008 Choice Music Prize, which aims to high­light albums from a vari­ety of gen­res and ulti­mately award the one which best summed up the year in music.

He also founded and man­aged The Sta­bles, an award-winning live music venue in Mullingar which has since become a per­ma­nent fix­ture on the itin­er­ary of any tour­ing act and which fea­tured the 25^th Anniver­sary edi­tion of Hot Press as one of the ‘25 Great­est Things’ about music in Ireland.

In his Pub­lic Rela­tions work, Ronan can guar­an­tee effec­tive PR results, par­tic­u­larly in national and regional news­pa­pers, radio sta­tions and tele­vi­sion sta­tions. He has a proven track record in PR and to date he has worked closely with dozens of sat­is­fied clients drawn from a vari­ety of busi­ness and cul­tural fields. These include Paddy Dun­ning, Grouse Lodge Stu­dios, But­ton Fac­tory, Tem­ple Bar Music Cen­tre, Record Fairs Ire­land, Cook­ieweb, Fuzzy Logic Records, Mind­field (at the Elec­tric Pic­nic), e2 Music, Live Trans­mis­sion Records, the Celtic Media Group, Sound Train­ing Cen­tre, National Wax Museum Plus, Mulin­gar Cham­ber of Com­merce, rock groups The After­math and The Bliz­zards, author Gerry Buck­ley, The Brazen Head, John Mac’s Café Bar, Show­tours, Ban­d­room Stu­dios and many more. He also works as a music con­sul­tant and has been to known to doff a DJ’s cap from time to time, play­ing every­thing from wed­dings to clubs to dodgy pubs.