Tributes have been paid to former editor of The Irish Times, Douglas Gageby, who was cremated on Saturday following a private family funeral service at Mount Jerome in Dublin, writes Patrick Smyth.
Gageby, who in the mid-50s launched and edited the Evening Press and twice edited the Irish Times - from 1963 to 1974 and 1977 to 1986, died aged 85 on Thursday following two years of ill-health.
Under his editorship, The Irish Times was transformed from the paper of a dwindling southern Protestant community to become a financially successful, confident, liberal voice of the middle classes and the paper of record.
Although an Ulster Protestant, proud of his Belfast roots, Gageby served in the Irish Army during the second World War and then rose rapidly through the ranks of the de Valera-controlled Irish Press group. He joined The Irish Times first as joint managing director and then took over as editor, in which role he expanded massively coverage of the North and of social issues.
Editorially he championed the cause of constitutional nationalism and brought a wide range of new talent into the paper. He was one of the architects of the transfer of control of the paper from private hands to the Irish Times Trust in 1974.
The Editor of The Irish Times, Ms Geraldine Kennedy, said yesterday that he was "a journalistic icon for all of us who knew him", who had "moulded and shaped The Irish Times and the best of Irish journalism for most of the latter half of the 20th century".
She added: "An intensely private individual, he was always known to young and not so young reporters as 'Mr Gageby'. And in a newsroom where he nurtured many talents in the 1960s, 70s and early 80s, what Mr Gageby said was law.
"He transformed The Irish Times from being a minority newspaper of the unionist persuasion to the independent chronicler of events in Ireland, North and South, and the world around us today. He promulgated many causes in his editorship: constitutional nationalism and the entry of many women into journalism to mention but two."
Mr Seamus Dooley, Irish secretary of the National Union of Journalists, said he "was a colossus of Irish journalism" who contributed enormously to the success of The Irish Times".
"Douglas Gageby was committed to the creation of a tolerant and liberal society and his values were reflected in The Irish Times. He was especially committed to the principles of freedom of expression, and we in the NUJ are forever in his debt for his strict adherence to the concept of editorial independence."