He always had not just a fascination with words, but how they were put together in a newspaper context. He was one of the fourth generation of his family to have been involved in the ownership of the media group, and was still a director of Landmark Media at the time that the company was bought by The Irish Times in 2018.

Early years

As a young man shortly after the end of World War II, Ted, as he was known, could be seen darting in and around the printing presses at the offices in Academy St, at a time when the then Cork Examiner, Evening Echo and Cork Weekly Examiner were printed on old linotype machines, using molten lead. It was not the safest place for a youngster, but he revelled in it.

He went to school at Christian Brothers College in Cork, but most of his summer holidays were spent at the Examiner office, where he gained an insider’s knowledge of how the printing presses and linotype machines worked. 

He learned the business from the ground up, especially from the fitters, whose ingenuity was taxed to keeping the old machines functioning in the absence of spares, replacements, and lubricants during and shortly after the war.

By the 1950s, his skills were honed to such an extent that he could take a problem printing press to pieces, have it fixed, and put it back together again. 

Before joining the company, he went to Sweden for work experience in the paper mills which supplied the newspaper group. He later went on to study science at University College Cork. 

A new age

He soon realised, however, that the days of hot metal printing were numbered, so in the 1970s, as technical director, Ted began the process of designing, commissioning, and training for the change-over to the new era of web offset printing. 

This happened literally overnight, and came smoothly into service in May 1976, placing the Examiner group at the cutting edge of the industry in Ireland.

A decade later the Examiner was also the first Irish paper to have full colour,  and Examiner journalists became the first in Ireland to input their stories directly into a computer system in 1986. 

Ted led the group through major dynamic developments as chief executive from the early 1980s until 1993, when he was succeeded by his cousin Alan.

While visionary in his understanding of the role various new technologies played in modern communications, Ted was also committed to quality journalism and to editorial excellence. 

Even into his late 80s, he could be found every day walking the editorial floor of the newspaper, talking to reporters and news editors, sharing story ideas with a twinkling good humour.

But while he always was quick with a supportive word, he never interferred.

Tim Vaughan who was editor of the Irish Examiner for 15 years, remembered Ted as the perfect owner and chairman. 

He truly believed in the importance of editorial independence and whenever there was a particularly tricky situation you knew he had your back. He’d walk up to my desk, put his hand on my shoulder and quietly say, ‘Tim, you have my full support’. For an editor it doesn’t get better than that.

He was always proud of his family’s roots, declaring that it wasn’t blood that flowed through his veins, but ink.

He was also keenly aware of the Examiner's importance to the community, its relationship with Cork — a city he loved. Aware too of the Examiner legacy of the three generations of family that went before him, and the ethos of those who served before him.

The Cork Examiner was founded in 1841, by John Francis Maguire, Nationalist MP, at the beginning of the decade which also saw the establishment of Queen’s College, Cork, in 1845, later becoming UCC. 

Ted was the great-grandson of Thomas Crosbie, who joined the Cork Examiner as a reporter in 1842 at the age of 15, eventually becoming editor and later proprietor. 

Thomas was an enterprising newspaperman, often sailing out in a small boat to pick up news and American newspapers from ships calling at Cork harbour. 

It was in this way that he got his most famous “scoop” by learning from the crew of a US vessel that the American Civil War was over.

Media pioneer

Outside of the newspaper group, Ted had a wide range of interests and associations. He was involved in many other aspects of Cork business and cultural life, including the Cork 800 celebrations in the 1980s, Cork's year as European Capital of Culture, Cork Opera, and Threshold, the homeless charity. 

The impact he had on a city he was proud to call home was remembered by Taoiseach Micheál Martin, describing him as "a man whose life was woven into the very fabric of his home city of Cork for more than nine decades".

As chief executive of the newspaper group including the Irish Examiner and Evening Echo, Ted was a true pioneer of modern Irish media, with a keen scientific and business mind, and a passion for enriching the charitable, cultural and social life of his city and country.

A lifelong sailing enthusiast, Ted began sailing dinghies as a 10-year-old in 1941, becoming admiral of the Royal Cork Yacht Club more than 40 years later.

Anyone who either worked with him or sailed with him will remember Ted’s wicked sense of humour. When in the 1980s the family acquired a wayward puppy, Ted would hear his wife, Gretchen, shout: “Out, out, out…” 

Ted named the dog Thatcher, insisting that it wasn’t because she was a bitch, but because ‘out, out, out’ was the British prime minister’s response to proposals on Northern Ireland made by the Irish government. 

In 2018, at a ceremony to mark the ending of the Crosbie family relationship, he retained his sense of mischief, declaring a “great similarity” between himself and the statue of Father Mathew, the apostle of temperance, in the centre of Cork. 

“The statue sitting in Patrick Street looks to make sure that Mangan’s clock is accurate, that buses come on time and, up to recently, looked with severity at those coming in and out of the Swan and Cygnet pub.” 

He had his fill of tragedy when his beloved wife was killed in a car accident in October, 1996 and his daughter Suzanne died in December, 2007. While always deeply saddened by his dual loss, he bore it with stoicism and courage.

While he will be remembered as the quintessential newspaperman, Ted Crosbie always exhibited a wider engagement with the world. 

If he was a ‘shovel engineer by vocation’ he was also a humanitarian by nature. 

In a wide-ranging article for the Examiner to mark the new millennium, he wrote: “The relief of third world poverty and the defeat of fundamentalism of all kinds must be top of Humanity’s Agenda for the first 100 years of the Millennium.

"If, in setting our sights on these two objectives, we remember that the greatest human virtue is charity and charitable outlook, then the deficiencies in Irish society, like our potholes, will be filled in.”