Monthly Archives: April 2024

Visit to Old St. Patrick’s in New York City

Over the years I’ve visited more than two dozen St. Patrick’s churches in four countries, as detailed in this special section. But one historic church eluded me until earlier this month, when I finally stepped inside the Basilica of Old St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Lower Manhattan.

As the first church in the United States dedicated to Ireland’s patron saint, it was the original cathedral of the Diocese of New York. The cornerstone was laid in 1809, and the completed church was consecrated in 1815. St. Pat’s became a target of the Know Nothings and other anti-Catholic and nativist movements. Damage from an 1866 fire was repaired two years later. By then, however, construction had begun on the larger and now more familiar St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan. Read more history of the first St. Patrick’s.

My wife and I attended the midday Mass at Old St. Pat’s during our recent visit. Here are a few photos:

The orange and yellow umbraculum at left signals the church’s 2010 designation as a basilica.

View from about three quarters back.

Front entrance is on Mott Street between Houston and Prince.

Mural on nearby building shows view down Mott Street with the church on the left, behind the trees. Empire State Building seen in the background at right edge of the green canopy.

On war reporting and trauma, then and now

PERUGIA, Italy–At the International Journalism Festival, the psychological toll of war reporting vies for attention with the role of fact checking in this record “Year Elections” and the fast-developing impacts of artificial intelligence. A few presentations here on conflict coverage provided contemporary perspectives on my work about early 20th century American journalists in revolutionary Ireland.

BBC journalist and author Fergal Keane, born in London and raised in Ireland, spoke about his latest book, The Madness: A Memoir of War, Fear, and PTSD. As described by the Guardian, “The book traces a line back through the alcoholism that killed his father to his ‘family history of hunger and war’ in Ireland: the famine of the 19th century and then the bloody fight for independence. His grandmother received an injured veteran’s pension for her role in a conflict as brutal as those Keane went on to cover.[1]Emma Graham-Harrison, “The Madness by Fergal Keane review–the BBC correspondent on conflict, fear and PTSD, The Guardian, Nov. 17, 2022.

At #IJF24, Keane described his decades of war coverage as the manifestation of an addictive personality. “There’s never such a feeling of being alive in places with such a close presence of death,” he said. And unlike other addictions, this one came with more praise and awards the longer he continued; unlike the alcoholic or drug addict who engenders growing disgust and disdain with each episode of bad behavior.

“A big war is the biggest story in the world,” Keane said. “It’s natural for a journalist to want to be there.”

Fergal Keane and BBC colleague Richard Colebourn seated opposite their images on the screen at the International Journalism Festival, Perugia, Italy, on April 19.

But by January 2020, recently named the BBC’s Africa chief, Keane experienced three breakdowns and landed in a locked psyche ward. “You don’t’ notice that your (mental) defenses have crumbled,” he said.

Writing The Madness became part of his “reckoning,” Keane said. He quoted the poet Robert Lowell, “Why not say what happened.”[2]“Epilogue” from Day by Day, 1977. That’s also natural for journalists.

In his 2017 book Wounds: A Memoir of War and Love, Keane detailed how his grandmother, Hannah Purtill, her brother, Mick, and his friend Con Brosnan, in North Kerry took up arms against the British Army. The trauma she suffered manifest itself as depression he observed as a boy in the 1960s. Keane also described the revolutionary period as “a heroic myth.”

Not every war correspondent gets PTSD, Keane noted. He also was sympathetic to journalists, especially freelancers, who do not have access to the same high-level mental health care that he accessed through as a BBC employee. Keane praised the younger generation of correspondents as being more “emotionally literate” about such care, and he scoffed at the notion there was ever a “golden age” of war reporters.

At another #IJF24 war coverage panel, the BBC’s Jeremy Bowen, a veteran of 20 conflict zones, said he doesn’t care for the phrase war reporter. “I prefer journalist,” he said. “You are there to be accurate, fair, and empathetic. You are there to work out the truth.”

Jodie Ginsberg, CEO of the Committee to Protect Journalists, said domestic journalists in conflict zones, including the so-called “fixers” who assist visiting correspondents, usually have the toughest challenges during a war. “You are reporting on your family and friends, and you can’t go home.” She said social media reporting has made these domestic reporters more visible targets to hostile regimes or insurgents.

From left to right, Jeremy Bowen of the BBC; moderator Janie DiGiovanni of The Reckoning Project; photographer Ron Haviv; and Jodie Ginsberg of the Committee to Protect Journalists. Image on the screen is Haviv’s work from Bosnia.

References

References
↑1 Emma Graham-Harrison, “The Madness by Fergal Keane review–the BBC correspondent on conflict, fear and PTSD, The Guardian, Nov. 17, 2022.
↑2 “Epilogue” from Day by Day, 1977.

Subscription appeals for Irish newspapers, part 2

The Joseph P. Tumulty papers at the Library of Congress contain a folder labeled “Support for Ireland.” Among other items it contains subscription solicitations for two newspapers: The Irish Statesman and The Irish Press. Details about the Statesman found in part 1 of this post .

Discussion of the 1930 solicitation letter for the Irish Press, below, must note this newspaper was the Dublin daily published from September 1931 until May 1995; not the same-name weekly published in Philadelphia from March 1918 until May 1922. Irish republican leader Éamon de Valera was the driving force behind the Irish paper, which he tried to finance with funds from the 1920 Irish bond drive in America. The bond was promoted by the earlier Irish Press, which had direct ties to Sinn Féin separatists fighting to establish the Irish Republic. The Philly weekly sided with de Valera, then touring the United States, in the bitter split among Irish republicans in America.

Once the 1921 treaty with the United Kingdom was accepted, the new Irish Free State filed a lawsuit to collect $6 million in bond funds still held in America. De Valera and other Irish republicans counter sued for the money. The matter dragged through U.S. courts until 1927. Finally, the New York Supreme Court ruled the money should be returned to the original bond subscribers. That’s when de Valera began his effort to encourage the bond holders to sign over their returns to help him launch the new Irish Press.

The main appeal of the enterprise, as seen in the letter above, was to free Ireland from the “mental bondage” of British newspapers. But the paper also would become a powerful tool for de Valera’s political ambitions. U.S. journalist, author, and social activist Charles Edward Russell chaired the American committee assisting De Valera’s effort. Another committee member, Chicago lawyer John F. Finerty, had litigated the bond case on behalf of the Irish leader and active in the de Valera-created American Association for the Recognition of the Irish Republic.

Another ally, Joseph McGarrity, who published the first Irish Press, suggested that De Valera try to interest newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst in establishing a new paper in Ireland, according to David McCullagh. “A Hearst newspaper would be sympathetic to de Valera’s politics–but it would be out of his control. No more was heard of the idea.”[1]David McCullagh, De Valera, Vol. 1, Rise 1882-1932.[Dublin: Gill Books, 2017.] 397.

The Pittsburgh Press, Feb. 22, 1930.

The newspaper effort brought De Valera back to America several times between 1927 and 1930. He visited numerous big city papers to inspect press equipment and develop a roster of potential editors. But his main mission, McCullagh says, was to learn how to keep both financial and editorial control of the newspaper that finally debuted in 1931.

The story of the Irish Press American Corporation, incorporated in Delaware, and the parent company in Dublin, is long and convoluted. The effort was hampered by the crash of the U.S. economy, the Great Depression. Details of how many shares were turned over, and how much money was raised, are disputed. “However, it is safe to conclude that the fundraising operation in the United States fell short of the total set for it,” David Robbins wrote in his 2006 thesis.[2]David Robbins, “The Irish Press, 1919-1948, Origins and Issues.” MA in Communications theses, Dublin City University, June 2006.

It is unclear in Tumulty’s papers at the Library of Congress whether he ever subscribed to the Irish Statesman or the Irish Press. The subscription return forms are blank, but could be a additional copy of forms that he completed and returned.

References

References
↑1 David McCullagh, De Valera, Vol. 1, Rise 1882-1932.[Dublin: Gill Books, 2017.] 397.
↑2 David Robbins, “The Irish Press, 1919-1948, Origins and Issues.” MA in Communications theses, Dublin City University, June 2006.

Subscription appeals for two Irish newspapers, part 1

I’ve been reviewing the Joseph P. Tumulty papers at the Library of Congress, mostly correspondence from his work as secretary (chief of staff) to U.S. President Woodrow Wilson. I also viewed a post-White House folder labeled “Support for Ireland.” Among other items, it contained subscription solicitations for two newspapers: The Irish Statesman and The Irish Press. Details of the former begin below the image. I’ll write a separate post about the latter.

Note the incorporation of the Irish Statesman with the previously established Irish Homestead. Sir Horace Plunkett founded the latter agricultural journal in 1895. Poet and painter George William Russell, known as AE, joined the effort, first as a contributor, later as editor until the Homestead folded in 1918. Plunkett also published an earlier iteration of the Statesman in 1919-1920 as the official organ of his Irish Dominion League, which favored keeping Ireland within the British Empire rather than a separate southern state and partitioned north.

Plunkett remained a director and contributor to the new Statesman, with Russell named as the editor. The weekly’s editorial philosophy considered the Irish in Ireland as one people, regardless of the 1921 partition. The “15th September” referenced in the brochure was the journal’s first issue in 1923. The brochure also boasted the Statesman‘s roster of contributors:

A subscription to the Statesman cost $4 annually, or 10 cents per copy, in America. The journal’s debut received limited attention in the U.S. press. In Wisconsin, a Capital Times editorial praised the its efforts to find “a just balance between the interests of rural and urban communities” to be “worth emulating” in the American Middle West.[1]”The Irish-Statesman And Our Farmer-Labor Problem”, The Capital Times, Madison, Wisc., Oct. 12, 1923. The 1920 U.S. Census had revealed for the first time that more Americans lived in cities than rural areas. In heartland states like Wisconsin, the fledgling Farmer-Labor Party attempted to make common cause among agricultural and industrial workers who had suffered in the First World War economy.

In Miami, Florida, hardly a hub of Irish America, the Herald praised Russell, insisting his talents ensured the new paper would be “read all over Europe and America,” according to the unbylined op-ed. “It has the same power that any small country paper has anywhere in America, but he has made it the voice of a race and of a chaotically struggling people, which is of tremendous significance.”[2]No headline, A8 editorial page, The Miami Herald, Oct. 28, 1923.

Back in Ireland, the outlook of the Taum Herald (County Galway) was less optimistic. “Being thoughtful, giving food for reflection, it is not likely we fear, to be too popular in a community where so little serious thinking is being done, and it is because we know and appreciate its good qualities and merits that we dread its ultimate success.”[3]No headline, page 2, The Taum Herald, Sept. 29, 1923. The Statesman lasted for only seven years.

“The paper bids farewell to its readers’ because—and only because—the people in Ireland who are prepared to back their opinion of its merit with a weekly payment of threepence, are not sufficiently numerous to give reasonable hope of its becoming even approximately self-supporting,” Plunkett wrote when the journal folded April 12, 1930. The weekly “finally succumbed to the apathy of the Irish reading public,” professor of Irish literature Frank Shovlin later concluded.[4]Frank Shovlin, “The Irish Statesman, 1923-1930” in The Irish Literary Periodical 1923–1958, [Kiribati: Clarendon Press, 2003].

The 1923-1930 run of the Statesman is available at the Library of Congress. The National Library of Ireland holds numerous resources related to the paper, including Edward Doyle Smith’s 1966 Survey And Index of the Statesman, with an extensive discussion about Russell.

NEXT: The Irish Press

References

References
↑1 ”The Irish-Statesman And Our Farmer-Labor Problem”, The Capital Times, Madison, Wisc., Oct. 12, 1923.
↑2 No headline, A8 editorial page, The Miami Herald, Oct. 28, 1923.
↑3 No headline, page 2, The Taum Herald, Sept. 29, 1923.
↑4 Frank Shovlin, “The Irish Statesman, 1923-1930” in The Irish Literary Periodical 1923–1958, [Kiribati: Clarendon Press, 2003].