Ted Crosbie, a giant of Cork's media world for decades, es away
Mr Crosbie, was conferred with an honorary degree of Doctor of Laws by UCC in 2007. He was also Chairman of the Press Association in London. Picture: Denis Scannell
THE death of Ted Crosbie - a giant of Cork’s business and media world for decades - has been announced.
He was the chairman of Thomas Crosbie Holdings, later Landmark Media - parent company of the Irish Examiner, The Echo, and a string of other newspaper and radio interests - until its sale to the Irish Times group in 2018.
That sale marked the end of a 146-year ownership of the group by the Crosbie family.
Mr Crosbie, from Montenotte, who was 91, had been living in St Luke’s Home in Cork city in recent months.
He spent more than 60 years in the newspaper business.
Ted’s great-grandfather, Thomas, had ed the then Cork Examiner in 1843 as a reporter, and became proprietor in 1872, starting the Crosbie link.
Born Thomas Edward Crosbie, but known to all as Ted, in April, 1931, Ted was the second eldest, the only boy in a family of four, who lived in the family home at Woodlands, Montenotte, which his grandfather had bought from the Arnott family in 1916.
He attended Christian Brothers College junior school and went on to Christians’ secondary school.
During his school years, Ted was encouraged to familiarise himself with the family business, and he retained a particular interest in the printing side. He spent his summer holidays at the Examiner and Echo and learned all aspects of the business.
Ted went on to study Science at UCC, received his BSc in 1952, and ed the family company full-time.
In 1976, as Technical Director, Ted led the process of changing over to the new era of Web Offset printing, placing the newspaper group at the cutting edge of the industry in Ireland, almost a decade before the Dublin papers managed it. It was perhaps his greatest achievement with the company.
Ted later led the group through major dynamic developments as Chief Executive from the early 1980s until 1993.
He married Gretchen Kelleher in 1960 and they had six children – the late Suzanne, Elizabeth, Tom, Andrew, Edward and Sophie Sadly, in 1996, Gretchen died in a car accident en route from Dublin to Cork.
Aside from family and business, Ted’s other great ion was sailing, which he inherited from his father. Ted became Irish National Helmsman Champion in 1950 and was iral of the Royal Cork Yacht Club in the 1980s.
He was conferred with an honorary degree of Doctor of Laws by UCC in 2007. He was also Chairman of the Press Association in London.
On the day his family’s link to the newspaper industry was broken in 2018, Ted thanked the staff for their dedication and, in typically jovial mood, said that the dust rising during the heatwave had caused irritation to his eyes.
Ted, who once described himself as “a chemist by training, a shovel engineer by vocation, and a manager by desperation,” also declared a “great similarity” between himself and the statue of Father Mathew.
“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.”
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