Drawing on the oral testimony of former journalists and editors, this research examines the role of journalism in Ireland since the 1950s. The thesis investigates four aspects of the working lives of former journalists and editors. First, it studies journalism as a career choice: how and why people become journalists. Second, it explores the relationship between journalism and politics, and how former journalists characterise that relationship. Third, it takes a similar approach to the relationship between journalism and religion. And fourth, it asks how technology has impacted on the working lives of journalists and on the practice of journalism. The thesis also draws on the work of Pierre Bourdieu and field theory to assess how journalism influenced – and was influenced by – other fields (specifically politics, religion and technology). In each case, it considers aspects of continuity and discontinuity: how did things change, and how did they stay the same? The focus in this research is on print journalism rather than broadcasting. Historians frequently draw on newspaper archives as source material. Yet only a small fraction of Irish journalists have written memoirs, and the working lives of journalists in Ireland remain under-researched. This project aims to go some way towards filling that gap. Using oral history as a methodology, this thesis draws on testimony from thirty former journalists and editors who agreed to face-to-face, on-the-record interviews about their working lives. The recordings and transcripts of each interview will become part of the Media History Collection at Dublin City University, where they will be digitised, made available for public access, and may form part of future exhibitions.