Irish Examiner view: A professional to the end
Day Last Musgrave Irish Picture: The Paddy Barker Donal Examiner At Working On His
Donal Musgrave, who has died after an illness borne with fortitude, was a journalist and a true professional who wrote insightful, considered and rigorously fair editorials in this newspaper for over a decade.
His 54-year career in journalism began in Fleet Street in London where he worked for the Irish Press. He went on to work for the , the and later this newspaper where he had a distinguished career as a reporter, news editor and, from 1994 until his retirement 13 years ago, chief leader writer.
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His writing career brought him to Nigeria to cover that country’s civil war in the late 1960s; to Wales to report on the Aberfan coal tip disaster which killed 144 people in 1966 and to Northern Ireland to write about ‘the Troubles’. As a keen environmentalist, he wrote extensively on Gulf Oil and Bantry Bay, including the oil spillages and the Whiddy Island disaster which claimed the lives of 50 people.
His colleagues recall a professional and a gentlemen who sought out the truth and was not afraid to stand by a story. He was a wonderful mentor and did much to encourage women at a time when there were few working as reporters or sub-editors.
Even when a hand tremor made writing articles difficult, he persisted and used speech-recognition software to continue to meet deadlines. That was typical of the man. He was a professional until the very end.