Last week, dozens of former employees of the Dublin-based Irish Press group got together to mark the publication of a book of reminiscences about the newspapers that closed in 1995.
By coincidence, last month the former staff of the UK-based Today newspaper held a party to celebrate their time on a paper that also closed in 1995.
With the greatest of respect to Today (for which I also worked very briefly as consultant editor in 1991), it did not have anything like the political, cultural and national impact of the Irish Press and its stablemate, the Sunday Press.
As several of the 50 or so chapters in The Press Gang* make clear, the titles had real clout during the dramas of the developing Irish state (and republic).
Founded in 1931 by Éamon de Valera to support his Fianna Fáil party, its editorial staff were always aware that they were working for a special kind of publication. As a former editor, Tim Pat Coogan, remarks in the foreword, the group fostered “an extraordinary feeling of camaraderie.”
That is proved by the willingness of so many of them to contribute to The Press Gang, which is edited by David Kenny. In his opening note, he writes:
“The group (Sunday, Irish and Evening) constantly floundered, and those half-drowned souls who manned the pumps did so because they loved it.
Financial reward never came into the equation; to work for the Press meant being constantly broke. The rewards for being a journo are not tangible, and in the case of the Press they are only memories now.
Memories of stories broken, deadlines met, mad characters sidestepped, bizarre work practices and monstrous hangovers.”
Its end was sad. I recall the time when, having transformed from broadsheet to tabloid, it foolishly called in help from the former editor of the Sun, Larry Lamb. His ideas about content and design ran counter to the tradition of the paper.
There is much to appreciate in this book, even for an outsider, because journalists’ tales of scoops that got away, missed deadlines, and, of course, the drink, are of universal appeal (to other journalists).
My only disappointment was that there was no contribution from the Fleet Street writer and raconteur, John McEntee, who has entertained us down the years with stories of his time on the Irish Press.
*The Press Gang: Tales from the glory days of Irish newspapers (New Island Books)
