Mark Little (born 1968) is an

Irish Irish may refer to: Common meanings * Someone or something of, from, or related to: ** Ireland, an island situated off the north-western coast of continental Europe ***Éire, Irish language name for the isle ** Northern Ireland, a constituent unit ...

journalist, television presenter and author. He presented ''

Prime Time Prime time or the peak time is the block of broadcast programming taking place during the middle of the evening for a television show. It is mostly targeted towards adults (and sometimes families). It is used by the major television networks to ...

'' for

RTÉ (RTÉ) (; Irish language, Irish for "Radio & Television of Ireland") is the Public broadcaster, national broadcaster of Republic of Ireland, Ireland headquartered in Dublin. It both produces and broadcasts programmes on RTÉ Television, telev ...

until December 2009. He took a year of leave of absence from RTÉ to pursue a project centered on digital media and global journalism. He launched the project in April 2010, called Storyful. which he sold to

News International News Corp UK & Ireland Limited (trading as News UK, formerly News International and NI Group) is a List of newspapers in the United Kingdom, British newspaper publisher, and a wholly owned subsidiary of the American mass media Conglomerate (c ...

in 2013. In 2015 he joined

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

, first as vice president of media and partnerships for Twitter in Europe and later becoming managing director of Twitter in Ireland. He resigned from the position in 2016.

Early life and education

Little was born in Dublin on 10 September 1968 and lived in

Malahide Malahide ( ; ) is an affluent coastal settlement in Fingal, County Dublin, Ireland, situated north of Dublin city. It has a village centre surrounded by suburban housing estates, with a population of over 17,000. Malahide Castle dates from th ...

County Dublin "Action to match our speech" , image_map = Island_of_Ireland_location_map_Dublin.svg , map_alt = map showing County Dublin as a small area of darker green on the east coast within the lighter green background of ...

, later moving to

Oughterard Oughterard () is a small town on the banks of the Owenriff River close to the western shore of Lough Corrib in Connemara, County Galway, Ireland. The population of the town in 2016 was 1,318. It is located about northwest of Galway on the N5 ...

County Galway "Righteousness and Justice" , anthem = () , image_map = Island of Ireland location map Galway.svg , map_caption = Location in Ireland , area_footnotes = , area_total_km2 = ...

. He studied Economic and Social Studies at

Trinity College Dublin , name_Latin = Collegium Sanctae et Individuae Trinitatis Reginae Elizabethae juxta Dublin , motto = ''Perpetuis futuris temporibus duraturam'' (Latin) , motto_lang = la , motto_English = It will last i ...

for 5 years, and took his BA degree in 1997. During college, he served as president of the Students' Union for a year, and was a member of the Labour Party.

Career

Little began his career in

journalism Journalism is the production and distribution of reports on the interaction of events, facts, ideas, and people that are the "news of the day" and that informs society to at least some degree. The word, a noun, applies to the occupation (profes ...

working for ''

The Sunday Business Post The ''Business Post'' (formerly ''The Sunday Business Post'') is a Sunday newspaper distributed nationally in Ireland and an online publication. It is focused mainly on business and financial issues in Ireland. Founding to Irish financial crisi ...

''. He was then hired as a TV reporter for

RTÉ News and Current Affairs (RTÉ) (; Irish for "Radio & Television of Ireland") is the national broadcaster of Ireland headquartered in Dublin. It both produces and broadcasts programmes on television, radio and online. The radio service began on 1 January 1926, while ...

in 1991, after answering a

newspaper A newspaper is a periodical publication containing written information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background. Newspapers can cover a wide variety of fields such as politics, business, sports a ...

advertisement. He became RTÉ's first

Washington Washington commonly refers to: * Washington (state), United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A metonym for the federal government of the United States ** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered o ...

Correspondent in 1995. He remained there until 2001, before returning to Dublin to become Foreign Affairs Correspondent. His Washington post was filled by Carole Coleman. In 2001 he won TV Journalist of the Year in the ESB National Media Awards. In his time with RTÉ, he has met such US politicians as

Bill Clinton William Jefferson Clinton ( né Blythe III; born August 19, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. He previously served as governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981 and agai ...

Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton ( Rodham; born October 26, 1947) is an American politician, diplomat, and former lawyer who served as the 67th United States Secretary of State for President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2013, as a United States sen ...

and

Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the U ...

. He presented the documentary programme ''Who's Afraid of Islam?'' in 2006. He has also reported from disaster and conflict areas such as,

Iraq Iraq,; ku, عێراق, translit=Êraq officially the Republic of Iraq, '; ku, کۆماری عێراق, translit=Komarî Êraq is a country in Western Asia. It is bordered by Turkey to Iraq–Turkey border, the north, Iran to Iran–Iraq ...

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...

Asia Asia (, ) is one of the world's most notable geographical regions, which is either considered a continent in its own right or a subcontinent of Eurasia, which shares the continental landmass of Afro-Eurasia with Africa. Asia covers an area ...

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...

and the

Americas The Americas, which are sometimes collectively called America, are a landmass comprising the totality of North and South America. The Americas make up most of the land in Earth's Western Hemisphere and comprise the New World. Along with th ...

. In 2008, he presented ''American Dream: Dead or Alive'' on

RTÉ One RTÉ One ( ga, RTÉ a hAon) is an Irish free-to-air flagship television channel owned and operated by Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ). It is the most-popular and most-watched television channel in the country and was launched as ''Telefís � ...

. Little often presented RTÉ News specials such as

Government budget A government budget is a document prepared by the government and/or other political entity presenting its anticipated tax revenues (Inheritance tax, income tax, corporation tax, import taxes) and proposed spending/expenditure (Healthcare, Educa ...

s and

election An election is a formal group decision-making process by which a population chooses an individual or multiple individuals to hold public office. Elections have been the usual mechanism by which modern representative democracy has opera ...

s. In 2002, he joined RTÉ's flagship current affairs programme ''

'', which he co-presented with

Miriam O'Callaghan Miriam O'Callaghan (born 6 January 1960) is an Irish television current affairs presenter with RTÉ. O'Callaghan has presented '' Prime Time'' since 1996, and her own summer talk show, ''Saturday Night with Miriam'', from 2005 onwards. In th ...

. In November 2009, he announced his desire to take a leave of absence from RTÉ for the period of a year. His reason was to pursue a project combining

digital media Digital media is any communication media that operate in conjunction with various encoded machine-readable data formats. Digital media can be created, viewed, distributed, modified, listened to, and preserved on a digital electronics device. ' ...

and global journalism. On 17 December 2009, he presented his final ''Prime Time''. This being a field he has experience in through his work on

. On 12 April 2010, his new project, storyful.com, was launched. He developed the website along with other web journalists. In 2016, Little resigned from Twitter and started Neva Labs, which was launched in 2018 as Kinzen. On October 5, 2022, Spotify announced it had acquired Kinzen for an undisclosed amount.

Personal life

In his early 20s, Little was in a relationship with Maxine Brady, the then president of the

Union of Students in Ireland The Union of Students in Ireland (USI) ( ga, Aontas na Mac Léinn in Éirinn) is the national representative body for third-level students' unions in Ireland. Founded in 1959, USI represents more than 374,000 students in over forty colleges acr ...

. His first child, a daughter, Sorcha, was born when Little was 21. As of December 2009, Little was married to Tara Peterman, an American who worked with him on ''Prime Time'', they had two children, Daisy and Tommy, and lived in

Dalkey Dalkey ( ; ) is an affluent suburb of Dublin, and a seaside resort southeast of the city, and the town of Dún Laoghaire, in the county of Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown in the historic County Dublin, Ireland. It was founded as a Viking settlement ...

, County Dublin.

References

External links

Storyful.com
*
Mark Little on 'The Future of News'
at IIEA, 11 December 2009 {{DEFAULTSORT:Little, Mark 1968 births 20th-century Irish people 21st-century Irish people Living people Alumni of Dublin City University Alumni of Trinity College Dublin Prime Time (Irish TV programme) presenters RTÉ newsreaders and journalists People from Malahide