MemoirMost readers of a newspaper, I suspect, don't know much about who puts the paper together or how it is done, and don't want to know. It is rare that a newspaper itself will figure in news reports. Most of the time the reporting is a one-way process, and these great engines of communication and information stay silent about themselves. So a book like Seamus Martin's is to be valued, if only by the minority reader.
As Moscow correspondent of The Irish Times, Martin covered the dismantling of the Soviet system, and reported from South Africa on Nelson Mandela's release from prison and the ending of apartheid. His memoir of a life in newspapers will be of interest to anyone who wants to see behind the broadsheet page, to read between the lines.
Seamus Martin grew up in the then-new Dublin suburb of Ballyfermot, and joined the Irish Press in Burgh Quay as a trainee journalist at the age of 17, in 1959. There, he was essentially a copy boy for the sports reporters, but it was, he says, a wonderful training.
Some of the best stories you hear about the idiosyncrasies of newspaper life - still, more than 10 years after the three Press titles closed - come from Burgh Quay. Many of these stories have to do with drink or bad management, and one of Martin's better yarns, about Bobby Pyke, the Press cartoonist and caricaturist, combines both.
"A dapper man, usually dressed in tweeds with his grey hair swept back, Pyke was almost permanently drunk," writes Martin. When Major Vivion de Valera, editor-in-chief and son of Eamon, decided to reduce the fees paid to Pyke, he did it, "in the true Irish Press style of management, without informing Pyke in advance". When Pyke opened his pay packet he decided to confront de Valera, who was attending a diplomatic function for a visiting African head of state.
Fortified by several Baby Powers, Pyke arrived at Iveagh House, where the reception was in full swing and champagne and smoked salmon were being mopped up. Pyke made a beeline for the major, who was deep in conversation with an official from the visiting delegation and butted in with the words: "There you are, Major Vivion de Valera, TD, entertaining Africans and starving your fucking own."
Most journalists in the Press, according to Martin, shared a single ambition and that was to get out of the place and find a job somewhere else as soon as possible. Martin himself left in 1967, for the Independent. From there he went to the first version of the Sunday Tribune, brought down by its disastrous offshoot the Daily News, which lasted for a mere week. In 1983, after thinking he would never get a full-time job again, he was taken on as a sports sub-editor in The Irish Times.
He was impressed by the intellect and dramatic style of Douglas Gageby ("perhaps the paper's greatest editor"). When Martin wanted out of the features editor job he had been promoted to, Gageby told him he had made the right decision: "There are only two jobs in The Irish Times. One is writing . . . and I have the other one." There is generosity towards Gageby's successor, Conor Brady, who had lost a good deal of support from staff by the time he stepped down as editor. Martin reprints Brady's impressive valedictory address on the purpose of journalism - and there is an even-handed treatment of those who contended to succeed him.
THE CORE OF the book concerns Martin's time in South Africa and what was still the Soviet Union when he arrived; both places have left a deep impression. He tells his story clearly and with a nice sense of pace and humour. He explains terms, such as the jargon of journalists and the odd phrase in Russian or Afrikaans. There are side trips to other places: an alarming time on a dockside in Albania, under fire from rebels as Italian marines tried to evacuate him and a few others.
Martin gets in a few digs; a few scores are settled - some adversaries named, some not. We can only wonder who were the two senior journalists who disdainfully referred in the author's presence to his brother, the new bishop Diarmuid, as "a middle-aged man in a frock". Two men on the foreign desk who did not get on well were "known to more sardonic members of staff as Iran and Iraq".
As the downturn in The Irish Times'financial affairs became clear, around the time of the September 11th attacks, and it was announced that 250 jobs were to go from a workforce of 700, the office on D'Olier Street became "a shark-infested wash-hand basin". There was animosity among the lower orders towards the multiplicity of editors who had been enjoying very good conditions. A group of the latter were appointed to a "restructuring committee", some of whom formed a "junta" "attempting to run the show themselves" when it became known that Brady was leaving; the intrigues are wonderful. There must have been times when Martin thought: "Oh to be back in Albania."
This is a worthwhile and vivid account of two important turns in the world's history, seen at first hand, and a rare inside look at the workings of Irish newspapers, in, as Martin puts it, good times and bad.
John S Doyle is a freelance journalist
Good Times and Bad - From the Coombe to the Kremlin: A Memoi r By Seamus Martin Mercier Press, 318pp. €19.99