Hugh McLaughlin: Hugh McLaughlin, who died on January 1st, was a visionary of Irish publishing. He saw how Ireland's indigenous publishing industry would develop in the second half of the 20th century. First he created magazines, then newspapers to serve a fast-changing Ireland.
Some of his attempts succeeded; others failed. Many were successful in other hands. Ultimately little came to fruition that had not first shown up on the pages of his A4 notebook: his constant companion, his office, his diary, and his blueprint for a bright tomorrow.
He was born in October 1918, the youngest by far of a stationmaster's large family in Killygordon, Co Donegal. At age 16 he became apprenticed as a barman in a public house on Gardiner Street, Dublin.
In 1935, his employer guaranteed a bank loan to enable McLaughlin and his sister, Annie Beggs, to set up a tailoring business. (His daughter Valerie remembers many years later her father taking up the hem of her sister's debs ball dress, as none of the women in the house could sew!)
To combat shortages during the second World War, McLaughlin devised a means of extracting fine sewing thread from reels of industrial thread. He also turned his hand to making men's braces out of old bus tyres.
Around 1950 he became involved in a printing company called Fleet. Given his interest in greyhounds - he was the proud owner of Gypsy Fire, which enjoyed considerable success on the track - he began publishing a magazine for greyhound owners. By 1952 he was printing Kavanagh's Weekly, in which the fiery Monaghan poet took potshots at the great and the good, not forgetting The Irish Times. "It pandered to the dullest and deadest elements in the country," Patrick Kavanagh thundered.
There were many entries in the A4 notebook in the next two decades. Each day McLaughlin logged what needed to be done. At night he crossed out achievements and listed tasks for the following day on a fresh sheet, updated as ideas came to him.
McLaughlin had met and married Nuala Ryan, a Dublin woman, and together they became a formidable combination.
Starting with Creation, a glossy magazine on high-quality paper, they challenged head- on the imported British magazines which had dominated the Irish market. A barrage of titles followed, the Irish Farmers Journal, Woman's Way and Woman's Choice among them. Business & Finance magazine was born out of a train conversation between Nuala and journalist Nicholas Leonard, it is said.
There was a current affairs magazine, This Week. Later additions included Nikki, for teenagers, and Spotlight for the showband era. McLaughlin was the inventor and unchallenged monarch of the Irish magazine sector and his throne was the company of which he was managing director, the Creation group.
In 1973, McLaughlin and his partner Gerry McGuinness, who had worked in a Dublin cinema, launched Ireland's first colour tabloid newspaper, the Sunday World. McLaughlin was a little uneasy about the photos of scantily clad girls - viewed now they look overdressed. McGuinness contributed marketing expertise and the new paper was a huge success.
Then it all went badly wrong. In 1977 Creation went into liquidation. Wages, the Revenue Commissioners and suppliers went unpaid. Many titles were sold - they continue in other ownership to this day.
Independent Newspapers took a majority stake in the Sunday World in 1978 and McLaughlin and McGuinness joined its board. But henceforth the brave new world was seen in a different light. McLaughlin was on a short leash so far as credit was concerned.
If he was down, he showed no signs of it.
In 1980 he quit the Independent board to avoid a conflict of interest. He had another Sunday newspaper in him. Initially with partner and editor John Mulcahy, now owner of the Phoenix magazine, he started a quality Irish Sunday tabloid, the Sunday Tribune.
Mulcahy soon withdrew, to be replaced by Michael Smurfit, the paper and packaging tycoon, and Conor Brady - later editor of The Irish Times - was appointed editor. In the space of a week, the tabloid became a broadsheet, building sales to almost 120,000, and it looked like Hughie had done it again. But profits come slowly in newspaper publishing and Smurfit too pulled out. McLaughlin called the staff together and made a rousing speech.
He had money, he had backers and he had plans. Big ones. The plans, it emerged, were for the Daily News, a national daily tabloid.
He recruited additional staff and got new premises. Some 15 issues appeared in 1982, then nothing. The dream was over, taking with it the Sunday Tribune, later revived by Vincent Browne. Soon afterwards a virtual Daily News clone, the tabloid Irish Daily Star, appeared and is with us today. The difference was that its backers, Independent and Express newspapers, had deep pockets.
There would be no more publishing ventures for McLaughlin but retirement was not an option. He stayed busy inventing and patenting. A golf buggy and a machine for removing water from playing pitches are among his successes.
He relished using his native Donegal wit to solve problems that had defeated others. The A4 notebook is finally closed, but in its day it held the best roadmap of the future of Irish newspaper and magazine publishing. And much else besides.
Hugh McLaughlin: born October 1918; died January 1st, 2006