Tributes paid to former Irish Times editor Gageby
His body was cremated on Saturday following a private family service in Mount Jerome, Dublin. He died on Thursday evening after two years of ill-health.
Born in Dublin, the only son of an Ulster Protestant, the family moved to Belfast when he was five. Having studied modern languages at Trinity College, Mr Gageby served in the Irish Army as a military intelligence office during World War II.
In the mid-1950s, he launched and was first editor of the Evening Press.
Twice editor of The Irish Times from 1963 to 1974 and from 1977 to 1986 he transformed it from a newspaper for a dwindling southern Protestant community into a successful, liberal middle-class paper.
"A paper is no good unless it sparks and sometimes pokes people in the eye, as long as you can give all the information you can dig up fairly," he once told an interviewer.
Irish Times editor Geraldine Kennedy described Mr Gageby as a journalistic icon "for all of us who knew him", and as an intensely private individual.
"He promulgated many causes in his editorship: constitutional nationalism and the entry of many women into journalism to mention but two," she said.
Seamus Dooley, Irish secretary of the National Union of Journalists (NUJ), said Mr Gageby was committed to the creation of a tolerant and liberal society.
"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," said Mr Dooley.
Conor Brady, who succeeded Mr Gageby as editor in 1986, said his predecessor prized accuracy and honesty in journalism but never thought journalism could be truly objective.
"What he sought in writers who worked for him was detail, accuracy, curiosity and fairness," he added.
Douglas Gageby is survived by his daughters, Susan, a High court judge, and Sally; and sons John and Patrick. His wife Dorothy died in September, 2002.
