It is good to report that I received a whatsap message from a good old friend Keith Baker telling me about Stanley's funderal.... it read: Ages since I looked at the old blog. I went to Stanley's funeral and among those present were Martin Lindsay, Don McAleer, Howard Beattie, Roy Smyth, Fred Hoare, John HIcks, Robin Morton, Noreen Erskine and Alan Lewis. There were eulogies from Stanley's wife, Maureen and from his grandson. The attendance at Carryduff Presbyterian Church was also treated to a display of some of Stanley's work from photgraphing The Beatles and Bloody Sunday.

This tribute came from the Irish News..... One of the north’s best-known photographers has died at the age of 92 following a career that spanned more than four decades. Stanley Matchett, who previously worked for the Belfast Telegraph and was awarded an MBE in 2003 for services to photography, died on Friday at his home in Carryduff. He was known for iconic images including photos taken on Bloody Sunday in Derry in 1972 of Father Edward Daly waving a bloodstained handkerchief as one of the victims Jack Duddy, was being carried through the streets. Mr Matchett also famously captured shots of the Beatles during their performances in Belfast in 1963. He was named NI Sports Photographer of the Year on three occasions and also won Press Photographer of the Year in the Rothmans Press Awards. Bloody Sunday Trust dedicates anniversary ceremony to children of GazaOpens in new window Along with his wife Maureen, Mr Matchett hosted photography course in Co Donegal for over 20 years, inspiring hundreds of amateur photographers to hone their skills further. A death notice described him as the “dearly beloved husband of Maureen, much loved father of Karen, Joanne and Gavin, devoted grandfather, great-grandfather and dear brother of Norma”.

I wanted as Blog Master still to put this obituary up about a journalist who knew his trade and operated successfully in this day and age when so many newspapers are less well cared for by sub editors, a dying breed it seems judging by the number of typos and unedited writing we seen in the papers now.....

I read this obit and thought it deserved to go up in the copyboys blog....he was a newspaper man to the core. Obituary for Ben Hurren, who helped to bring colour and computerised type-setting to The Daily Telegraph. He was managing director at the new Manchester plant, at the time the most modern newspaper factory in Europe Telegraph Obituaries 4 September 2024 Ben Hurren: worked 18-hour days to get the new plant up and running. Ben Hurren, who has died aged 87, joined The Daily Telegraph in 1958 as a shorthand typist in the circulation department, and ended up presiding over the giant £27.8m printing plant in Manchester, then the most modern newspaper factory in Europe, during the Telegraph titles’ transition from black and white to colour. In 1983 he was Deputy Northern General Manager of The Daily Telegraph when Eddy Shah, owner of the Messenger group of newspapers, locked horns with the National Graphical Association, the printers’ union, who were insisting on a closed shop. It was the first real test of the 1980 Employment Act and Shah won, encouraging other newspapers to embark on changes that the notoriously strike-prone print unions would previously have rendered unthinkable. Then came the bombshell news, late in 1983, that the International Thomson Organisation had terminated its contracts to print The Daily Telegraph at Thomson House in Withy Grove, Manchester, with notice to quit by December 31 1985. On top of modernising production and doing battle with the unions, Lord Hartwell’s Daily Telegraph was faced with a scramble to build a northern satellite plant, ahead of their planned modern London factory on the Isle of Dogs. They decided to find a site in Manchester, because of its long tradition as Britain’s second newspaper city, and to recruit the displaced Thomson House employees. Hurren worked 18-hour days to get the new plant up and running in under two years. Even his wife Norma was to be found on detail on the construction site. On the night of January 1 1986, the first editions of The Daily Telegraph rolled off the presses of the new Trafford Park plant. The Manchester press served roughly one in four readers – those in northern England, north Wales, Scotland and Ireland – and brought the Telegraph out of the Caxton age of hot-moulded lead type and metal printing plates and into the digital era. Much of the labour-intensive printing process was automated, and it even had robot fork-lift trucks, nicknamed “Daleks”. It was also air-conditioned and brightly lit – “goodbye to the inky warrens,” the paper reported. The editorial floor was “fully carpeted”. In addition to the colour supplement (which had existed since 1964), it made colour advertising in the news pages possible, with colour news pictures soon to follow. To defray the over-£100m capital costs of the modernisation programme, Lord Hartwell sold a controlling stake in the Telegraph Group to Conrad Black, and in 1987 the Telegraph Group entered into a joint-venture agreement at Trafford Park with News International, to be replaced by Guardian Media Group in a second joint venture from 1990. Hurren was made managing director of the renamed Trafford Park Printers, which he restructured to cope with the demands for colour printing, increasingly specific regional editions and ever-greater pagination. Benjamin Frederick Hurren was born in Walthamstow on May 16 1937 to Min and Fred, a tailor who had served in the destroyer Montrose during the Second World War. Ben attended Coppermill Lane School, where he would flick ink at his future wife. From there he won a scholarship to Sir George Monoux grammar school. After National Service in the RAF, he joined the Daily Telegraph’s circulation department under Grant Forbes, a notorious martinet who required his reps to wear trilby hats. Hurren served for a few years as a London rep for The Daily Telegraph before being promoted to Assistant Circulation Manager on the new Sunday Telegraph, founded in 1961. In 1974 he returned to The Daily Telegraph as Northern Circulation Manager and moved to Manchester. In 2000 he retired as managing director of Trafford Park Printers. He was chairman of Styal Football Club, trustee of the Manchester Science and Industry Museum and co-founder of a prize for young jazz musicians at the Royal Northern College of Music which, along with the Hayfield Jazz Festival, he persuaded The Daily Telegraph to sponsor. He was a fine sportsman, playing football, squash, cricket and golf, and in 1998 walked to Everest base camp. In 1963 he married Norma Waddington, who survives him with their two sons. Ben Hurren, born May 16 1937, died August 23 2024

We contacted The Chronicle where Mitchell worked in the earliest days of his life in journalism here in Northern Irelad and happily their editor Rebekah Lockhart was able to email me a copy of the obiturary/tribute the Coleraine newspaper published. A Memory of Mitchell IN the course of some 40 years working in newspapers, it was my privilege to get to know many fine journalists. One or two I would describe as outstanding. Mitchell Smyth belonged to that rare breed. He was a natural journalist of huge ability and with an unwavering dedication to a profession which he loved. His passing in Toronto last week has robbed the press world of a journalist of towering stature. I was Mitchell’s immediate successor, back in the late 1950s, as the trainee journalist in the reporters’ room of the Northern Constitution, a much-respected broadsheet based in Coleraine. Mitchell thus became one of my first mentors in the complex world of newspapers and newspaper people. I learned so much from him in my formative years as a local reporter – painfully acquiring the skills that would be expected of me by the editors I would later serve. I was able to observe first-hand Mitchell’s uncanny ability to recognise a news story almost before it happened! And to admire the skill with which he translated facts into readable news stories. I worked for some ten years with Mitchell, both as a colleague and later as a ‘rival ’ when I joined the Abbey Street staff of The Chronicle, although the relationship between the two papers was always relaxed and friendly. Few were surprised when they amalgamated in 1970. In addition to being a member of the Constitution’s editorial team in the Coleraine area, Mitchell was a correspondent for the national and Belfast press, including radio and television. Again, it was a role he undertook with energy and enthusiasm. Mitchell loved his native Ballycastle, from where many of his news stories emanated. His knowledge of the town and its people was incredible and he himself was one of the town’s best known residents. He had, I know, many opportunities to move to Belfast and beyond in the furtherance of his career. The union of The Chronicle and The Constitution was mirrored shortly afterwards by the marriage of Mitchell and Vilma, to the delight of their many friends. But we were sorry when they also announced their decision to move to Canada. In Toronto Mitchell’s journalistic talent was soon recognised and a distinguished career in the Canadian press culminated in his appointment as travel editor of the Toronto Star. Mitchell maintained his links with his many friends in the Ulster press and in recent years his annual visit home was an event much looked forward to. He had a remarkable repertoire of stories of his many assignments on behalf of the Toronto Star. Mitchell ’s last visit to Northrn Ireland was in June last year and despite recent illnesses he had been hoping to return this Sepember. The sympathy of Michell’s many friends in the newspaper world go out to Vilma and sons and to Mitchell ’s sisters Anne and Helen. Hugh McGrattan. *Mitchell Smyth was a natural journalist of huge ability and with an unwavering dedication to a profession which he loved. The sympathy of Michell’s many friends in the newspaper world go out to Vilma and sons and to Mitchell’s sisters Anne and Helen.

Mitchell was an honoured and enthusiastic contributor to the copyboys blog and it was my pleasure to enjoy his commentary and occasional criticism about things around us in the world ....another voice that will be missed but here and in Canada is remembered.... signed the Blogmaster.

Now for the sad news: I received an email which reads: Hello John, Norm Smyth here, Mitchell's youngest son. I'm writing to inform you of my father's passing on Wednesday morning. He passed away peacefully at home. As per his wishes, and he was adamant about this, we are foregoing any formal services. This email address is still valid and monitored by my mother, whom my brother and I are taking care of. Dad left us this list of people to email in this case, and you were on it. Remember him in his best of times, telling a yarn or two. 😀 Indeed it is sad news hearing about the death in Canada of a long time friend and contributor and here's hoping I recieve a copy of an obituary I'm sure will appear in a Toronto newspaper. RIP Michell Smyth.

My goodness.... what a pleasant surprise. And good to read we share the same age and our memories are working quite well!! Welcome to the copyboys blog started by Graham McKenzie and bequeathed to me by Billy Simpson before his departure a few years back. Its not what it was since I partly retired it but kept it alive for comments and to let me record departures and pay tribute. Anyway its good to get this text and contribution. Cheers Sent from my Galaxy

Thank you Michael M.... so mysterious and so interesting. Jack Sayers gave me my start in the Belfast Telegraph with a letter of appointment (still cherished!) sent December 1964 with my start January 1965 as a features/news sub editor under Tom Carson, then Features editor. Sayers was a great editor and all those who followed lived and worked in his shadow. Wason, Lilley, Curran and Lindsay even later Walker didn't leave the same mark. It is a pity you chose to be anonymous but we're pleased you saw a need to put your comment up to draw our attention to something which we are pleased to be told.

Well done, Alastair ... at least you remembered the copyboys and how to sign in and leave a fresh comment around here where it has been a bit of a desert for fresh views for a while ....but at least we are still here. Cheers!

This man was a good soul....from the start to the finish. He's missed by his good friend and by peoplle like me who knew 'then...' but not so much 'later....' But we knew the person he was and that didn't change who he was deep down. He's another persom I knew and he, too, is now gone ....yes, gone but he's still not forgotten for me anyway. Cheer Darryl.

Well, it was none of those things and Eddie has not come along here to tell us....I was keen to move away when we were talking in case people thought I supported whatever it was they were there about.

It is good to get a surprise, occasionally and that happened today when I was striding past Belfast City Hall and I noticed a motley crew standing on the pavement with placards protesting about something or other....Then I thought the one nearest me with a 'duncher' and dark glasses looked slighly familiar: Eddie? I murmered ... Stirling? The reply was an enthusiastic and instant: 'John!!...' and that proved it was the man we feature in the foreground of our photograph on this copyboys blog. Eddie Stirling, alive and well I am glad to report and doing something which he enjoys and feels is the right thing to do. Stirling work, I'd say and best wishes.