Jim McGuire, who has died in Ballina, Co Mayo, aged 85, was a dynamic force in regional journalism in a career spanning more than 60 years.
McGuire was the go-ahead editor and managing director of a number of provincial newspapers, on each of which he left his own individualistic imprint.
Unafraid of controversy, he was noted for his incisive and forceful editorials on a wide spectrum of subjects¸ most memorably his unrelenting criticism of the Provisional IRA’s campaign of violence. After one particularly trenchant editorial, Special Branch detectives kept a protective eye on his home for more than a year lest there be any reprisals.
While for brief periods he worked in different parts of the country, his abiding passion was the west of Ireland, where he was born and where he began his newspaper career. In the final 20 years of his life, he wrote a weekly column titled "Plain Chant" for his journalistic alma mater, the Western People. Esteemed teacher McGuire was born in Ballina in 1928 and received his education at the local national school, where his father was a teacher, and at St Muredach's College, where he shone at English under the tutelage of an esteemed teacher, Dr Edward Loftus.
After school, he considered entering the priesthood but did not pursue this possible vocation, though throughout his life religion remained an important part of his personality and he was proud to count himself a Catholic in the conservative mould.
He spent a brief period working as a trainee architectural draughtsman, and this was followed by a stint as a travelling salesman for a drinks company. Then, in 1950, he turned his mind to journalism and cheerfully took a hefty drop in his salesman's salary to become a cub reporter on the Western People in Ballina.
One of his colleagues was John Healy, later to become celebrated through his Backbencher column in The Irish Times, and the two men formed a friendship that would lead to joint journalistic activities in future years. Richly opinionated In addition to covering all aspects of local affairs, McGuire, under the pseudonym Tatler, immediately became a columnist on the Western's sister paper The Ballina Herald and the richly opinionated column won a large readership. In the mid-fifties, he took up an appointment in Limerick as mid-western correspondent for Independent Newspapers.
He returned to Ballina in 1958 to become first editor and then managing editor of the Western People. During most of his tenure as editor, the Western had the biggest circulation of any provincial newspaper and he revamped the paper in the 1960s to give it a more modern appearance and image.
He linked up again with his old colleague John Healy, hiring him to write a weekly political column from Dublin, with great success. Back to Ballina In 1976 he moved to Tralee to become managing director of the Kerryman. Within a year he was back in Ballina again, joining forces with Healy and a consortium of local businessmen to launch a new paper, the Western Journal, with himself as editor.
Two years later brought a move east to become managing director of the Drogheda Independent, after which he was attracted to Dublin to take up an assignment with Independent Newspapers to develop their in-house library.
Taking early retirement, he came back home to Ballina with his wife, Joan, settling down and writing again for the Western almost to the very end of his days. McGuire also served two terms as a member of the RTÉ Broadcasting Authority and wrote a history of St Muredach's Cathedral.
In his early 80s, he produced a local bestseller called The Light That Never Goes Out, recounting events that led to the defrocking of an errant priest in Belmullet.
He was predeceased by a son, Brendan, and is survived by his wife Joan (née Curry), two daughters and four sons.