Opinion

Mary Kelly: Joan Fitzpatrick was a trailblazer who changed the face of journalism

Journalist and lecturer Joan Fitzpatrick, who died last week, didn't suffer fools but still enjoyed a laugh
Journalist and lecturer Joan Fitzpatrick, who died last week, didn't suffer fools but still enjoyed a laugh Journalist and lecturer Joan Fitzpatrick, who died last week, didn't suffer fools but still enjoyed a laugh

THERE aren't many journalists of a certain vintage who didn't know Joan Fitzpatrick, who died last week, aged 97.

She set up the journalism course at the College of Business Studies in 1969, which at that time was only open to school-leavers. Although a graduate of Trinity College herself, Joan resisted making it a graduate programme.

It was to be 'pre-entry' into the profession, or trade, as she preferred to call it, and she believed it should be practical, not academic. So it was a mix of shorthand and typing, newspaper writing, law and public administration.

Numbers were kept tight as they only took on the number they believed could be absorbed into the local industry at the time. In my year, 1975-76, there were 10 on the course – three girls and seven boys.

When I think of Joan Fitzpatrick, I remember her vividly blue eyes, usually narrowed as she drew on one of the many cigarettes she smoked in the classroom.

From behind a plume of smoke, she taught us how to turn bland press releases into breezy news stories and how to conduct interviews.

Once she watched on as we role-played an interview in which we questioned another student playing the part of a vicar, who had lost several members of his young choir in a drowning accident.

"Did none of you think of expressing sympathy to that poor man before you bombarded him with questions," she asked, shaking her head.

It became, sadly, useful advice to the many of us young reporters who worked during the years of the Troubles, when the most regular marking was going to the doorstep of families bereaved by shootings and bombings.

Joan was from a different era when newspapers had few women on their staff – certainly not in general news. Females were designed for the fluffier end - women's pages usually, advice on recipes and fashion tips.

That's where she first landed when she joined the News Letter, but her bolshie nature meant she soon elbowed her way to the news pages. She made it clear to us that sharp elbows were a necessary part of a journalist's armoury.

Like the cynical and sassy journalist portrayed by Rosalind Russell in His Girl Friday, she took no prisoners, didn't suffer fools gladly, but still enjoyed a laugh.

When I first applied for a job on The Irish News I heard nothing about an interview, while a male classmate did. When I called at the office I was told I wouldn't be interviewed because they weren't taking on any more girls, since the last one was terrible.

Furious, I stormed round to the college to tell Joan what happened. She let me rant about the injustice of it, then said with a shrug: "I knew that was going to happen. But you needed to see it for yourself. This is what we're up against." Thankfully, times have changed.

She had a long and happy marriage to Rory Fitzpatrick, an executive producer at UTV. I remember the phone going off when we were in class and Joan picked it up.

"Harold Wilson has just resigned," she told us. "That was my husband on the line. When journalists hear something, they've got to tell someone. That's the instinct for news."

He died in 2019, aged 95. I last saw Joan at his funeral. She was in a wheelchair by then, but her bright blue eyes still blazed with wit and just a touch of mischief. Rest in peace.

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SO the Supreme Court has ruled that the NI Protocol is lawful – just like everyone, apart from the TUV and DUP, already knew.

Maybe Sir Jeffrey et al could study a map of the British Isles so that he can see why NI has always, of geographical necessity, required different rules to the rest of the UK.

But, demonstrating that some people never learn, the DUP and TUV don't accept the unanimous verdict of the highest court in the land, or indeed that they lost.

Quite simply, new law in the Withdrawal Act supplants the old law in the 1801 Act of Union. But those unionists who prefer old laws, given their general approach to life, are apparently deaf to reality.

Nothing can convince them that a trade deal does not alter the constitutional position of Northern Ireland – not even the EU bending over backwards to alter the provisions of the protocol, or the verdict of top legal brains.

Maybe they can appeal to the European Court of Human Rights?