Speaking of t’other O’Reilly, the be-knighted rather than benighted one, I had a fun discussion last night about Wednesday’s Independent News & Media smackdown on TV3 Nightly News with Vincent Browne, along with Fintan O’Toole and Sunday Times business editor Brian Carey. Carey I’ve never co-panelled with before; he’s very cool, very relaxed. I can never seem to get comfy on those couches. And you can’t wear blue, which means I’m limited to a funeral director outfit.

The topic was officially media ownership, and the implications of Denis O’Brien’s bid for control. He’s now got 25% of the company. But what’s it about? He’s doing a poor job making his case about corporate governance. (Brian Mulroney can still bring it, which helps.) So what’s O’Brien’s game?

You’d think it’s got to be an internet play, though. I’d leave the analysis of motives rooted in stuff that happened before I lived here to Sarah Carey. O’Brien thinks INM are slow off the mark in the new technology department. The fact that there was no streaming video of the AGM Wednesday was just one sign of the problem. But the only way that O’Brien gets control is if major institutional holders decide to flip. They’d have to have a good reason. Actually a great reason.

Surely it’s got to have something to do with the slow increasingly fast death of newspapers in OECD countries, in favour of online content? Surely a guy who’s made most of his money from doing deals around mobile companies has picked up some ideas along the way. Maybe even that he’s the guy to make INM a news brand that will survive the “iPod moment” for newspapers?

Bonus content: Vincent gave a long interview to Michael Cullen at Marketing magazine, where he is charmingly frank about a few things…like how he thinks Village will end up, why Sinn Fein should join the PDs, and the only time he was directly pressured by an advertiser, plus his thoughts on Eamon Dunphy. Some quotes after the jump.

On Village:

Is there less of an audience for investigative reportage now and more competition for other newspapers with supplements etc ?

When we published Magill back in the Seventies and Eighties we had sales of around 30,000 and the same after I revived it in 1997 it gain had a circulation of 30,000. I presumed it would apply to Village. We’ve had a rough time and lost a lot of money.

My only backer, Michael Smith, lost about €260,000 and I lost in the region of €1.2 million. Village is going to be a marginal exercise but we can make money on contract publishing and we should make significant money on the website.

You changed Village from a newspaper to a magazine format. Why?

We started off with a tabloid format. That proved a mistake as we were put on the floor of newsagents and other publications were then put on top of Village. We were invisible and so we changed to a magazine format. Advertisers prefer a glossy magazine.

You’ll have to check the full piece for some of the other juicy bits but I thought this take on the effect of the internet on journalism was pretty good:

Are you at ease with technology - the internet, social sites etc. Or are you a Luddite?
I use the internet a lot. It’s changed journalism significantly, in ways that haven’t been properly appreciated. Because of the difficulties there used to be in getting access to information, there had be investigative journalism, which relied mainly on getting information from people rather than from documents.

Now, the vast amount of documents that are available through official government sites is just enormous. It’s a question of making sense of those and knowing where to find them and what to find. The documents are far more reliable than people. I’m not saying people necessarily tell lies but naturally that memories and perceptions can be faulty.

The challenge of journalism now is making sense of this vast amount of information available on the internet. That, to a large extent, is what journalism has turned into. Of course, you still get tip offs from people on matters of importance.