It has been 40 years since the legendary editor of The Irish Times Douglas Gageby, took his leave of this newspaper, but before he left I came on to his radar. The late Maeve Binchy fell foul of Gageby for using a photograph of a heart transplant to illustrate a cookery column, but for me it was for something much closer to his heart.
In 1986 I had just joined the newspaper from the Irish Press after a three-month lockout in a dispute over new technology that was to prove the death knell for many skilled print workers, but they weren’t going without a fight.
Sitting at my desk in the Fleet Street newsroom on the day in question, deputy news editor Jack Fagan mentioned that Gageby was in very bad humour. Nothing to do with me, I thought, but how wrong I was.
In that day’s edition I had looked after page seven for design and content. Pretty straightforward: a threshing festival in the Meath village of Moynalty with a picture spread, a couple of news pieces and a column of shorts. No problem: grist to the mill.
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Little did I know that in the editor’s eyes it was the most important page in the newspaper. Back then the editor’s office opened on to the news subeditors’ section, and as I sat there I became aware of a presence standing over me. It was Gageby.
His first words were: “I believe you looked after page seven last night.” I had indeed and confirmed it. He then made mention of a river cited in a caption of one of the photographs.
This particular river was a tributary of the Blackwater, which feeds into the river Boyne. It flowed through Moynalty where the threshing festival – the subject of the picture spread – took place. The subeditor writing the caption had told me they checked the spelling of said river in the Ordnance Survey map and discovered one letter was different. I told them to go with the Ordnance Survey spelling, which was normal practice.
I informed Gageby of the Ordnance Survey spelling, to which he replied: “Would you mind getting the map.” He looked like a volcano ready to explode. As I made my way to the library on the next floor I realised that, for a one-letter change on a minor river, I could be in deep trouble. The problem was that I hadn’t actually seen the map. As I entered the library, I felt very alone in the world.
Opening the map with some trepidation, I sought the river and there it was, spelt the way we had it in the paper. I made my way back to Gageby and showed him the map with the OS spelling.
He looked at it and then at me and said he was chairman of the local angling club and that the river was spelt Borora, with two Os, and not Barora, as in the map and page caption. I replied we’d have to let the Ordnance Survey know.
He wanted to kill me, but what could he do? It was his river, his newspaper, his mistake. He was seething but I was off the hook.
Years later a book on Gageby, Bright Brilliant Days – Douglas Gageby and The Irish Times, was published. In his contribution Conor O’Clery, who blazed a trail as Moscow correspondent and in the US, wrote of his time as news editor under Gageby.
He stated the following regarding the editor’s priorities: “As news editor I knew there were some events he favoured that I should never overlook. In July the Orange parades had to be covered by a team of reporters.
“In August we had to send a colour writer to the Ould Lammas Fair in Ballycastle, Co Antrim. Most important of all was to arrange extensive coverage of the ploughing championships every September in Moynalty, Co Meath, where Gageby had a fishing lodge. You could miss a big political scoop but neglecting his beloved Moynalty was out of the question. It was very definitely an ”editor’s must".
All those years ago doing that page I never realised Moynalty was at the centre of his universe and somebody forgot to tell me.
