John Collins (journalist)

John Collins (born 1972) is an Irish technology journalist who is currently on the staff of The Irish Times. Born in Dublin, he grew up in Tuam, Co. Galway and subsequently Carlow, before returning to Dublin to attend University College Dublin from 1989-1993, where he studied English, Philosophy and Economics, graduating with a 2.1 (Hons). He subsequently attended DIT where he received a Post Graduate Diploma in Public Relations.

He began his career as a journalist while in UCD, contributing to the College Tribune and later editing the UCD Student Union News (later renamed the University Observer). He worked briefly as an account executive with Edelman Public Relations but left to concentrate on his career in music journalism. Since the early 1990s he had been contributing to a range of magazines including Hot Press, Muzik, the Dublin Event Guide, i-D and others as one of the only Irish journalists covering the emerging rave/electronic music scene from the inside.

In late 1995, he began to contribute to PC Live! magazine and in January 1996 took over as editor. Since then, his output has been almost entirely on technology and internet-related issues.

He left PC Live! in 2000 and became a high-profile freelancer. In those years he contributed to Ireland.com, Sunday Business Post, Computerscope, Business Plus, Silicon Republic, Business & Finance, and Smart Company. He has commented on technology and business issues for a range of radio and TV programmes for both RTÉ and independent stations, as well as co-presenting the RTÉ Two series, TechTV which ran in 1998, with Keelin Shanley.

He was awarded the Irish Internet Association’s Net Visionary Technology Journalist of the Year in 2007.

Collins maintains his own blog at www.taggingtech.com.

Since April 2007, he has been a staff journalist with The Irish Times on its business desk.