JOHN GARVEY: JOHN GARVEY had black ink running through his veins. That was what his colleagues said. He understood "hot metal" newspaper production so well.
The world of inky galleys, clattering manual typewriters, even louder Linotype machines, the smell of molten lead, reading type backwards “on the stone” before the big old printing press roared into life, spitting out papers hastily gathered into vans speeding off through the night . . .
Garvey – he was Garvey to those who worked with him, said with a mixture of respect and affection – had something else.
He had an intuitive grasp of what would interest readers, a "good story". "He could smell news," one said. It used to be unkindly said that The Irish Timeswouldn't know what news was, but could tell people what to think about it afterwards, and the Irish Independentonly knew news when it appeared in the Irish Press.
All generalisations, but there was a kernel of truth in them, and the Pressnewsroom was recognised as the finished article.
John Garvey was born in Newry, Co Down, and lived to see his home town designated a city. He attended St Colman's school Newry – John Magee, later papal secretary and bishop of Cloyne, was a contemporary – in a fine old redbrick building which had once been the Dromore diocesan seminary. After he finished school he began working in journalism for the Belfast Telegraph.
Later he moved to England, working for what was then the Manchester Guardian, and the Daily Mail. There he met Joyce Reilly, a Scottish woman from Dundee, and they married.
They chose to live in Ireland and when John Garvey joined the Irish Pressin 1964, the group's three titles were in rude good health. The Sunday Pressoutsold the Sunday Independent(there was no Sunday World) and the Irish Press, though it trailed the Irish Independent, was way ahead of The Irish Times.
Garvey began work as a sub-editor and quickly rose through the ranks, in turn becoming chief subeditor, assistant editor, then deputy editor and leader writer on the flagship daily paper.
The Irish Presswas founded by Éamon de Valera in 1931 "to give the truth in the news" and to support the Fianna Fáil party.
Garvey summarised the link with Fianna Fáil thus: " Irish Pressnewspapers have shared in many Fianna Fáil triumphs.
“We have also had our differences, as family friends invariably do. But our relationship remains special, bound by our history and common ideals.”
Garvey’s work rate was prodigious. Anthony Garvey recalls his father getting home from work after midnight.
“When I was 12- years-old, I’d be in bed and I’d hear the door open, and I’d slip downstairs. He’d hand me a copy of the first edition of the morning paper, and a pencil. My job was to find misspellings. For each one that I found, he gave me a square of chocolate. Then he phoned the night editor to make sure the corrections were made for the city edition.”
His daughter Claire recalled going with him to the theatre when he was reviewing a show.
“He liked Opal Fruits [sweets] but not the red ones, so I had to take them out of the box beforehand. Crosswords were a passion, a common enough one among journalists and printers alike.”
Another pastime was nine holes of golf – not more – at Howth.
In 1987 Tim Pat Coogan unexpectedly quit as editor of the Irish Press. Many expected Garvey's time had come, but the job went to Hugh Lambert, a respected colleague, and for Garvey it was business as usual. In the end it made little difference. Three national newspapers eventually collapsed in 1995 (with the loss of 600 jobs), at a time when newspapers had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to remake themselves, with windfall funds from sales of their stakes in Reuters news agency.
As the Press group fades from memory, the roll call of talented people whose careers began or was advanced there is often overlooked. It is too long to recite here. Many household names had good reason to remember good advice, gruffly given, and the skilled editing of their copy by the man they called Garvey.
After the Pressclosed, John Garvey worked as a freelance, filing copy for Irish and British trade titles. He was working on one such piece on the day a heart attack signalled his final deadline.
He is survived by his wife Joyce and children Anthony, Claire and Andrew.
John Garvey: born, November 18th, 1935, died, November 24th, 2011.