A balancing act one late great would be proud of
The late, great Déise newspaper man retired soon after I first started at the Examiner but plugged away, filing copy and making energetic calls to the desk as the Waterford stringer for a few years. His constant ability to produce ensured there’d be a vital tributary flowing steadily into the paper — as my friend Michael Moynihan wrote after Johnny’s death, he was a “shining light. Nothing happened in his bailiwick that he was unaware of”.
Despite the rest of us still lingering around on this mortal coil and being connected more than ever through a global network that pulsates all through the different days and nights, we have lost many of the skills which helped the likes of Johnny to thrive. But we have also been forced to polish some of the edges of the journalistic trade to make sure there’s nothing in our method that isn’t beyond reproach. For me, the focus on ethics is a good thing and not necessarily prohibitive.
