The Second Coming - Douglas Gageby and the Irish Times

LAST MONTH THE PUBLICITY Club organised a function to present an award to Douglas Gageby , editor of the Irish Times. Ted Nealon, now a Junior Minister, once a working journalist, was lined up to make the speech and presentation. And some of Gageby 's friends wondered if the editor would bother turning up for the occasion.
Gageby , probably the most successsful editor in the country, is noted for his shunning of the reception circuit and celebrity events. Gageby's modessty, however, is not unmannerly and he turned up to accept the award. Next morning the Press and Independent carried reports on the award and the fulsome tributes and had pictures of Gageby. The Times carried a report on Ted Nealon's thoughts on the art of communications. Its picture was of Nealon. There was a one-line mention of the award to Gageby.

In a way, the lack of self-promotion becomes a form of self-promotion. The deliberate playing down of the award is in line with the cool and stylish image of the editor who just gets on with the job. At the Irish Press Tim Pat Coogan is Coogan or Tim Pat or Tin Pot or yer man. (And when Indira Ghandi was killed Tim Pat dug out an old photo of himself laying a wreath in memory of Nehru and printed it in his paper.) At the Indeependent Vincent Doyle is seldom anything else but Vinnie. Irish Times staff refer to Mr Gageby or - more often - The Editor. Even those who speak disparagingly of Gage by speak disparagingly of "The Editor".

WHEN DOUGLAS GAGEBY joined the Irish Times as manaaging editor in 1959 the paper was dying. The standard joke was that if circulation was 33,000 you checked the obituary columns and if there were ten notices your readership was now 32,990. The Times had been the southern unionist paper and its readers were by the 1950s literally dying. It had, by its independence from the political parties and its opposition to the constrictions of Catholic social doctrines, won the allegiance of. the few liberals and intellectuals around in those years. But it was on its way out .

Gageby's first few years with the paper were spent on administrative matters and it was only in 1963 that he became editor. Sean Lemass's policies had opened up the economy to international capital and the conseequences were major. The tight paroochialism of the old Ireland was an inefficient basis for the move to indusstrialisation and there was a deliberate push to open up the culture to new ideas and influences. Education was reformed, television was born in the Republic, there was the paperback explosion, censorship was relaxed. The Second Vatican Council was opening debate on Catholic fundamentals. Coinncidentally, there were waves of radiicalism stirring internationally. Ban the Bomb, hands off Vietnam. Rock music and the youth culture were in their boom years. Up across the border we were beginning to hear the hiss of a rapidly-burning fuse.

Everything was up for debate.

Catholicism, war, national liberation, women's liberation, music, sex, class politics, poverty, drugs, exotic philoosophies, the examination of onceefirm beliefs and the rediscovery of traditions. It was a massive cultural development compressed into a short period.

The Press and Independent were smugly resting on their large circulaations. The Times had nowhere to go but up. Gageby reformed and revived the paper, boosting circulation and creating an Irish Times which reflected the excitement and controversies of the period of change in a manner which its rivals couldn't match. Allthough the Independent stayed way ahead in circulation and the Press maintained a healthy gap between its readership and that of the Times the latter became by far the most reliable and influential of the Dublin dailies. Its independent - if conservative `tradition made it more amenable to the new mood in the country. Its journalism was lively, sometimes irreeverent, questioning. At the same time it was in a solid tradition, that of the "paper of record".

With the help of returned emigre Donal Foley, Gageby recruited some of the finest talents of the late 1960s and encouraged the talents of thoseealready writing for the paper. (Gageby still ~retains his penchant for growing his own, rather than buying in estabblished talents.) The Times began appointing specialist correspondents.

It reported the North seriously before the outbreak of conflict and reaped the rewards when the explosion arrrived. Fergus Pyle was Northern corrrespondent in the period 1967-70 and the other papers had to run to catch up with his comprehensive reporting. In that period the Times increased circulation by 9,000 while the Press and Independent each lost 5,000 from circulation. By 1974 Gageby had brought circulation up to about 70,000, doubling its circulation in a decade.

In 1974 Gageby retired. The Irish Times was turned into a Trust in a complicated deal which saw six direcctors, including Gageby , walk away with £1.6 million between them. The money was borrowed from the Bank of Ireland in anticipation of continued high profits.

Hardly had the door closed behind Gageby when the Times went into a nosedive. The expected profits didn't materialise. Instead there were massive losses.

The financial problems were worrsened by the fact that they were occurring just as the effects of the 1974 international recession hit the economy, dampening advertising. The financial problems indirectly resulted in a more cautious journalism, as such problems are wont to do.

The new editor, Fergus Pyle, had a bad time. Unlike Gageby , who had the financial clout to spend on resources and on promotion the kind of money needed to combat the circulation problems, Pyle had to tighten the finances. He had been several years out of the office - first in the North and then in Paris and Brussels - and his appointment had caused some resentment among the journalists. Although he was liked personally he became increasingly involved in connflict with his staff over the running of the paper. In addition, his period as editor coincided almost exactly with the reign of the Cosgrave Coalition, a period in which the press was under government attack. Pyle was naturally cautious and middle-of-the-road and the paper began to flag. Journalistiically it seemed less adventurous, financially it was bleeding. Circulation was falling. By the end of 1976 it was down to 62,000.

In 1977 there was Gageby's Second Coming. By this time Pyle was only too glad to get out of the editor's chair. He had made a fine reputation as a reporter, principally in the North, and now a combination of circummstances had left him with a limping editorship. On the day Gageby returned there was elation in the Times newssroom. Dancing between the desks.

Gageby was able to reach the finanncial levers denied to Pyle and in his first year back the paper spent about £ 100,000 on promotion. He livened up the paper and put some enthusiasm into the staff. The circulation was back to 70,000 by 1978 and up to 75,000 the following year. Five years later it is almost 85,000. The success of the Second Coming sealed Gageby's reputation. ·He had said he was coming back for two or three years, just until the paper got back on its feet. Seven years later he's still there. He has now been 25 years with the Irish Times. About a year ago, when he turned 65, the Board asked him to stay on "for another bit".

THE THREE PEOPLE WHO CONNtrol the day-to-day running of the Irish Times are Gageby (editoria1), Louis O'Neill (management) and Major Tom McDowell. McDowell is Chairrman of the Board and is regarded by many as having played as important a role as Gageby in the paper's success from the 1960s onwards. The three work closely together and Gageby emphasises the .overlapping of funcctions and influence. It is an "inteegrated" paper, with the demarcation of editorial and management functions more vague than in most newspapers. Editorial executives have a large say in the management and promotion of the paper, something many of the journalists are quite proud of. This is in fact one of the Irish Times's strengths, the imaginative and consisstent marketing of the paper. It is also one of the reasons the Irish Times has become rather bland.

The financial problems of the midd1970s, when the paper lost about a .million pounds, were reversed in the years following Gageby's return and the losses were made up. Stability of a kind was achieved. However, no enterprise floating on an unstable economy is safe. The priority of the trio who run the paper has been to create as many stabilisers as possible. Some of these are purely commercial, others affect the editorial content of the paper.

In the 1970s about 68% of the Irish Times's revenue came from adverrtising, the rest from sales. Gageby had long advocated reducing the depenndency on advertising, to make the paper less vulnerable to fluctuations in the economy. These days the ratio is more like 60/40. However, the desirable trend results not primarily from increased sales but from a nottat-all-desirable fall in the volume of advertising. The fall has affected all papers but the Times is somewhat better prepared for the financial ups and downs than it was in the mid-1970s. The newspaper made a loss last year, but that was largely made up by revenue from subsidiary actiivities. This year also the paper is expected to make a loss. There are no firm figures as yet but the loss is estimated in the region of £70,000 to £100,000. (Unlike most other papers the Times refused to bargain down its advertising rates, believing that any gains made in that way would be short-term.)

Earlier efforts at broadening the base of the company and giving the newspaper itself some financial leeway were less than successful. Current diversifications are closely linked to the information business. There is the Irish Times Training Service. And the investment in new technology in the late 1970s is paying off not only in cheaper and more flexible typeesetting - the company also does the photo setting for scientific and matheematics text books for export. Last month saw the launch of ITELIS, a subsidiary which sells access to a legal information databank. Lawyers with personal computers can  from their desks punch up judgements and most other relevant details of cases from 1950 onwards, European law and a host of other services, at a cost of £75 per hour.

Possible future extensions of this type of product include financial information and library information from the files of the paper.

The further consolidation plans include the purchase of a new printing press, at a cost of £3 million. Negootiations with suppliers, the banks and grant agencies should be sewn up by the end of this year and it is expected that the new press will be installed by spring or early summer of 1986.

The new press will have a standard cut-off, so the elongated format of the present paper will be shortened, necessitating some changes in design. It will enable the Times to print its own colour on ordinary newsprint. At present, colour adverts in the Irish Times are pre-printed by the Indepenndent on glossy newsprint and later inserted in the Times. It's a costly process and every time the Times gets a colour advert it boosts the finances of the Independent. The Times will also use colour for editorial matter, particularly on the arts and features pages. The new machine will also be used to take on contract printing.

The Irish Times is these days treading the financial line between the red and the black, verging over into the red more often than not, but McDowell, 0 'Neill and Gageby are apparently succeeding in consolidating the paper's financial base. The alarm bells that rang among the journalists in the mid-1970s, when there were real fears that the paper might collapse, were still tinkling a couple of years after Gageby 's return. These days everyone is more relaxed.

THE FACT THAT JOURNALISTS in the Irish Times have an input into the management of the paper has its good points, which the journalists readily note. What is less often remarrked on is the equal and opposite effect, that the extent to which jourrnalists become involved in managerial responsibilities necessitates an equivaalent impingement of management's needs on the editorial area. The most marked effect is the extent to which Irish Times features are chosen with at least one eye on marketing.

The Times habitually runs one series after another. Ostensibly the idea is to break a long feature into digestible pieces. Too often the pieces are puffed up in order to stretch them over several days. The advantage of running a series, as opposed to several different features, is that a promotion campaign can more easily be launched for the series than for individual articles.

Another whizz is the Great Lamppposts We Have Known syndrome. A theme is chosen - rivers, battles, airports, towns, maybe lampposts will turn up soon - which can be exploited over a number of weeks. The results are often dire, they are almost always boring. They tie up the features pages for long periods. But they are easy to promote.

The epitome of the subordinaation of editorial enterprise to marrketing needs is the current series on "Careers" by the prodigiously proliific Christina Murphy. She is now working her way through her fourth dozen articles in the series and there are two dozen or so to go. The series is enormously successful in marketing terms. Accurate figures on the increase in circulation won't be available for some time but the estimate is about 1,800 copies extra per issue.

Each article examines one job, the pros and cons, the opportunities and the difficulties. In a period of mass unemployment, with many parents worried about prospects for their children, it's a winner. The series is certainly worthy in itself and Murphy does it well. In journalistic terms it is a service item, like a column which monitors food prices or tests cars or describes new products. To say it is not a lead feature is not to pass subjective judgement or to deneegrate the series in itself but merely to identify it as a particular kind of feature. However, because of the paper's marketing strategy and to' tap the widespread fears about unemmployment, the series is presented as a lead feature. A special promotion budget was set aside for advertising it on television. Unlike other service items it is not placed in a regular downpage position, it dominates the features page, excluding or downngrading other subjects. It has become, day after day for several months, the main non-news subject which the Irish Times believes its readers should be interested in. Because of the series' marketing potential the Times has taken a routine service feature and used on it the promotional aids, page positioning and signalling devices tradiitionally applied in newspapers to major feature stories. Purely in editoorial terms it signifies bad judgement. In marketing terms it is spot on and just what the Irish Times needs.

The Irish Times has begun threatenning to overtake the circulation of the Irish Press, something which seemed extremely unlikely when Gageby reeturned to the editorship in 1977. Again, this is due to the patient, connsistent and intelligent marketing straategy followed by McDowell, O'Neill and Gageby. While the Press grew stodgy, its readership predominently rural and elderly, the Times went for the kids. Apart from its avalanche of education features, again by the energetic Christina Murphy, the paper's "Newspaper in the Classroom" project is paying off. The project is a promootion effort which loses money - but its Jesuitical aim of getting them young has worked. Each year when colleges open the circulation of the Irish Times rises. Primary pupils are now being targeted.

WHEN THE IRISH TIMES BEEcame bland and timid in the mid-1970s much of the blame was ascribed by the paper's journalists to Fergus Pyle and the problems he was having. While some of this blame was probably justified the prime influence on the changing Times was that the times were changing. The rapid social changes in the 1960s and early 1970s represented in large part an emerging middle class fashioning a society in its own image. The Times journalists were part of that emerging class and their talents and enthusiasm matched the developments very well, under Gageeby's guidance. By the mid-1970s the emerged middle class had reached an accommodation with the traditional forces in society. The ball was over. Apart from occasional skirmishes the frontiers of the new society had been defined. The job now for the Times was to reap its rewards within those frontiers.

The most controversial set of stories published by the Irish Times during Pyle's regime was the Heavy Gang series by Joe Joyce, Don Buckkley and Renagh Holaghan in Febbruary 1977. The ripples from the story are still today lapping around the Kerry Babies case. The story seemed on the face of it to be in the radical, questioning mould in which Gageby had set the Times more than a decade earlier. But it was the excepption. It was not a comfortable story, it disconcerted its Times audience. Fergus Pyle later believed that it lost the paper readers. He was nervous of the story and but for the persistence of the reporters it probably would not have been published, at least in the format they devised. Despite Gageby's radical image in relation to Pyle, that was the attitude which continued to prevail after Gageby's return. There were very real scandals and crimes being perpetrated within the garda force. Joyce and Buckley followed up the fingerprint scandal, for instance. Gageby, no less than Pyle, was nerrvous of such stories and wanted to avoid them.

That attitude has persisted up to the present. The Times coverage of the Kerry Babies and Shercock cases has not matched its reporters' abilities. Straightforward, accurate reports that the gardai in the Shercock case lied have been toned down. While the Press and Independent kept in touch with the Shercock case and realised its significance the Times was out of touch. It began covering the Shercock trial only on the second day, when it learned about it from the other papers.

Apart from the Times's reluctance to tell its readers what they might not want to know, the paper has other problems - some of them, ironically, caused by Gageby's achievements. Gageby is The Editor, and what The Editor wants The Editor gets. As a result there is a not-very-helpful sychophancy at editorial middleemanagement levels within the paper. This partly stems from Gageby's laiddback approach to directing his staff. He runs a federal system, delegating authority to department heads. His pleasure and displeasure are expressed in praise and criticism after the event. This leads to continuous guessing at what The Editor expects. Should Gageby pause at a. sub's desk and remark that that looks like a nice photograph this act will be interpreeted as a command that the photo be used. It is routine for middlement to send reporters off on stories because Gageby has been heard to say that such-and-such is interesting. Sometimes such stories are eventually not used because it is realised that Gageby was simply making a comment, that he thought something was interessting, but did not in fact want to pursue the story.

Some journalists at the Times wonder whether Gageby himself means to encourage such slavish adherence to his whims or whether it stems from an over-dose of sychophancy from senior staffers who are afraid of disconcerting The Editor or who are over-respectful of his reputation, basing their judgements not on their own perceptions of a story but on their perceptions of what will please The Editor.

The editorial strengths of the Irish Times remain its comprehensiveness, its accuracy (most of the time) and the fact that it attracts intelligent reporrters and good writers. It also retains some old stalwarts, chief among them the rural bootboy John Healy. Some journalists complain that Healy has too much influence over Gageby. The two are old fishing buddies and talk twice a day on the phone. Healy stays at home, listening to and watchhing every current affairs show on radio and television, ringing a dozen or so trusted listening posts around the country and twice a week sending copy down to the paper. He is blamed for stimulating Gageby's mildly green republicanism and for propping up Gageby's flagging enthusiasm for Charrlie Haughey.

Gageby originally had great hopes for Haughey and on one occasion he and Tim Pat Coogan went on radio and competed as to who was Charlie's greatest fan. Gageby (and Healy) later came to the conclusion that while Haughey had been a brilliant Minister he hadn't delivered as Taoiseach. But Gageby didn't join in the Haugheyybashing, possibly because of Healy's influence, possibly because of his own perception. From 1981 on wards, as Haughey stumbled around the mineefield, setting off one explosion after another, there developed a body of opinion in Irish life that Haughey represented all that is evil in politics. Included in that body of opinion were many politicians and not a few journalists. The point of departure for these people became "Is This Good Or Bad For Charlie?" Haughey's every move was watched. Blind eyes were turned to Garret FitzGerald while just a hint of indiscretion on Haughey's part became justification for headdlines.

Gageby believed that some reporrters, including some at the Irish Times had gone overboard. He openly chided reporters as "blueshirts" - a joke, but the barbs were visible. Gageby played down some stories about Sean Doherty. He also dawdled over a decision to publish extracts from The Boss, the Joe Joyce and Peter Murtagh book about Haughey's antics.

The most celebrated Haughey story in the non-"blueshirt" element in the Irish Times was John Healy's "coffin dancer" paragraph. Just about everyyone in the business thought Haughey was about to succumb to an attack from Fianna Fail dissidents. Political reporters were returning to the paper with assurances that the man was all but gone. The Irish Press printed a political 0 bituary. John Healy, tucked away in his living room, far from the corridors of power, decided that the reporters were hearing what they wanted to believe. On the night before the crucial meeting at which Haughey was to be topped, Healy sent down his regular column. It didn't mention Haughey, it was all about Garret FitzzGerald. At the end of the column there was a short paragraph which cryptically asked if anyone would have jobs for a bunch of unemployed coffin dancers. Healy was the one commentator saying that Haughey would survive the attack.

Gageby read the column and rang Healy. Did he really want to leave that paragraph in? Gloriously right or gloriously wrong, said Healy. Leave it. And Haughey won. Healy's reputation as the man with his finger on the real pulse of the country was renewed. However, it was forgotten that if Healy was all that confident in his prediction he would have trumpeted his belief and not confined it to a cryptic paragraph which could have been easily buried had the decision gone the other way. He hedged his bet, but did it stylishly.

Healy made the running in the Irish Times during the controversy over the Constitutional Amendment on aborrtion, to the surprise of many. His style of downhome cracker-barrel philoosophy draped in slick Americanisms is usually used to convey a rural conserrvatism. His speciality (apart from ultra-confident political commentary, in which he gets things wrong as often as he gets them right) is pinning on groups or events names which humoorously sum them up. His classic was The National Handlers, to describe the coterie of professional hacks which guides Garret FitzGerald and his Ministers. The term has gone into the political language. When promiinent Catholics began organising to promote their social philosophy Healy neatly put them down as The Catholic All-Stars. He was uneasy with the emergence of the allegedly Pro-Life lobby, brandishing their Catholicism and demanding adherence to their politics. He flet there was somebody out there getting at him and he didn't know who they were. After he wrote his first .anti-amendment column he got puzzled queries as to why he seemed to be going against what he seemed to have stood for. He also got approaches from quasi-religious sources to write a book, which he felt were attempts to win him back to the fold or buy him off.

Editorially, the Irish Times at first seemed not to be taking the Amenddment issue too seriously, as if they didn't believe it could ever happen. The accommodation between the emerged middle class and the tradiitional forces in society had broken down as the latter sought to regain ground. When the chips were down the paper reported both sides fairly and took an editorial stand against the amendment, as might be expected.

AFTER GAGEBY RETURNED in 1977 the succession stakes began. Determined not to arouse the kind of problems created by the appointment of Fergus Pyle the management and the journalists began building structures of consultation on Gageby's successor. Currently there is an editorial committee of Dick Walsh (political correspondent), Paul Gillesspie (foreign editor), Bruce Williamson (senior deputy editor) and Jack Fagan (deputy news editor). The committee consults with Major McDowell and will have an input into the choice of editor, though the final decision will be made by the Board.

Right now there's not much for the committee to do. Gageby is fit and doesn't look his age and his enthusiasm for the job remains strong according to associates. His memory of the last time he left is tinged with guilt at having walked away just as the paper got into financial trouble. He wants to ensure that doesn't happen again, and as the financial state of the paper is still in flux, with major investments under way, he is unlikely to opt out in the forseeable future.

In the late 1970s there were three leading candidates for the jo b: Jim Downey, Conor Brady and Conor o 'Clery. Downey was then as exxperienced as he is going to get and· each passing year has reduced his chances in favour of a younger candiidate. Conor 0 'Clery is said (by, among others, Conor 0 'Clery, according to associates) to be out of the running, possibly because his Saturday Column has not shown the kind of weighty concern which senior management thinks appropriate to an editor of the Irish Times. Conor Brady currently works closely with Gageby and is charged with promoting the paper. He is now regarded as the probable choice. However, there are other possibilities. A number of senior journalists in semi-managerial positions are approaching retirement age. The promotions and the re-assignment of staff which should follow may show the emergence of some challengers to Brady.

Gageby's Second Coming stabilised the paper and the strategy of McDowell, O'Neill and Gageby has pointed the way to potential financial security. Editorially the paper no longer exudes the passion and compassion it exhibited in the 1960s when it, along with its readers, was seeking to define the changing social and political norms. The ocean of unemployment, for instance, is not a focus of passion or compassion but a market to be serviced and on which to build circulation.

There are some parallels between this period and the beginning of the period, twenty years ago, when Gageby began reviving the Irish Times. The social and political effects of the ecoonomic devastation are potentially as major as the changes then on which the Irish Times advanced. This time it is the Irish Press which is in the position in which the Times found itself then. An elderly and declining readership, a need to change in order to survive. The difference is that the rising 1960s tide was an easy market. The needs of the dour 1980s are not so easy to meet or even to recognise. The stodgy management record of the Press shows little of the imagination needed to match the paper to the mood of the times. And they don't have a young Gageby. But then, neither has the Irish Times. •