Much-loved Tipperary Star journalist Ronan Dodd retires after decades of public service

It is probably no surprise that I became involved in newspapers - my grandmother was a book binder with Thoms; my grandfather was a printer with Brunswick Press and my father was a printer with Brown and Nolan and then The Irish Press. Printer’s ink is definitely in the blood.

All told, I have spent 50 years in newspapers, starting as a Saturday night copyboy with The Sunday Press in 1974. I wrote my first articles at around 15 years of age for the then national Irish language newspaper Inniu.

I joined The Irish Press subs desk in 1979 where I worked until December 1986, leaving to get married and set up home in Nenagh, where my wife, Virginia, was a teacher in St Mary’s Secondary School.

During my career I have worked with some of the best national and provincial journalists - my first boss at The Irish Press was the novelist John Banville and first Editor was Tim Pat Coogan.

I was also privileged to know the likes of the columnist and writer Con Houlihan, among many others, from my days with “The Press”.

At provincial level there were people such as Brendan Halligan, Jimmy Woulfe and Eugene Phelan in the Limerick Leader; Michael Dundon and Anne O’Grady among those at the Tipperary Star; Gerry McLoughlin at the Nenagh Guardian; Buddy Burke at the Midland Tribune, where I spent 18 months, and national newspaper Mid West reporters Arthur Quinlan, Noel Smith, Tony Purcell, Brian McLoughlin - I won’t name them all because I am bound to leave someone out, but I can say that I learned something from every one of them.

Over the span of 50 years I was fortunate to have worked on many major events, and it is ironic that one of the biggest stories is still in the national media as I retire.

I was the night sub-editor on the night of The Stardust.

The images of that tragedy that were captured on camera by Irish Press photographer Myles Byrne will stay with me forever.

I covered the papal visit in September 1979 in Irish for The Irish Press, and also wrote rugby match reports in Irish for the paper. They made an exception once and asked me to cover an international soccer match between Ireland and Argentina in 1998 when a young Maradona lit up the pitch.

Locally, I was one of the few allowed into the press conference with President Gorbachev and his wife, Raisa, when they visited Shannon, and covered the visits of Bill Clinton to Limerick and Barack Obama to Moneygall.

When I came to Tipperary in 1986 I freelanced for a while before taking the job as Assistant Editor at the Wexford People, with responsibility for Ireland’s Own.

It was a job that came with more responsibility than just being Editor of Ireland’s Own -

I was often asked by elderly men and women if I would sign documents for them on the basis that the Editor of Ireland’s Own must be a “nice fellow and trustworthy”.

Thank you all for putting your faith in me!

It has been a privilege to cover the north Tipperary area for the Tipperary Star for the past 14 years, engaging with local communities and helping to bring their stories to a wider audience.

The proudest moment of my career was undoubtedly with the Tipperary Star when I was awarded the Local Journalist Media Justice Award in 2022 for a series of reports on how the criminal justice system treats those with a mental illness.

During those 14 years, the local newspaper industry has gone through a transition from being a weekly print issue to being almost a 24-hour operation due to the advent of the internet and social media.

Indeed, the newspaper industry has changed utterly since I started 50 years ago.

It has gone from hot metal type, reading pages upside down and backwards, to the “new technology” of paste-up to direct input.

Until the arrival of computers to replace the old typewriters, any newsroom was a cacophony of noise as stories were banged out, sometimes by reporters who could only type with one finger.

The printers created their own din on linotype machines, producing metal type. It was a noisy, inky, oily and labour-intensive effort to bring out a newspaper. These days, newsrooms can seem as silent as libraries.

While the industry and the nature of news gathering is changing continuously, I am sure my colleagues in the Tipperary Star and The Nationalist will rise to the challenges.

I wish them all the best for the future.