San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Executive guided Hearst newspapers, foundations
George Irish, who led Hearst Newspapers Group for a decade before guiding two of the Hearst family’s philanthropic foundations, died of a heart attack Tuesday at his home in New Jersey. He was 78.
Irish’s peripatetic career in newspapers — a period in which he and his first wife lived in a total of eight cities — included 29 years at Hearst, beginning in 1979 when the company acquired the Midland (Mich.) Daily News. He subsequently served as publisher of several Texas papers, including the Beaumont Enterprise, the Midland Reporter-Telegram and the San Antonio Light, which closed in 1993 after Hearst announced its intention to buy the rival Express-News from Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.
Among his many career achievements, Irish received the 1992 Texas Newspaper Leader of the Year Award, known as the Pat Taggart Memorial Award, the highest honor given by Texas newspapers.
He was promoted to vice president and group executive for Hearst Newspapers in 1993, and was named to the top job in the newspaper division in 1998 at age 53. In the decade that followed, Irish led the division as it met the challenge of the tidal shift to online news consumption and the resulting pressure placed on print advertising revenue and newsroom budgets.
“I had the great fortune to work for and with George for more than 20 years,” said Steven R. Swartz, who succeeded Irish as head of Hearst Newspapers upon Irish’s retirement in 2009 and currently serves as Hearst Corp.’s president and chief executive officer. “He was a wonderful man, a dedicated executive and a muchloved member of our Hearst community and of all the communities he served so well.”
In the two years it took to effect merger of the morning San Francisco Chronicle and the Hearst-owned afternoon San Francisco Examiner, including a lawsuit to prevent it, Irish was a stabilizing force on the Hearst side during extremely stressful times for the staffs of both papers.
“George was reassuring at a time of uncertainty,” said Glenn Schwarz, longtime Examiner sports editor, and subsequently sports editor of The Chronicle. Schwarz served on the transition committee where management from both papers planned how to combine staffs that had historically been competitors, with a builtin redundancy at nearly every editorial position.
Irish flew in from New York at pivotal moments.
“He was here when he needed to be,” Schwarz said. “There was a corporate side to him, but there also was a personal side that I enjoyed being around. He really did care about the paper and what The Chronicle was going to be like after the merger.”
The merger was finally completed in 2000. Hearst jettisoned the Examiner and became publisher of The Chronicle.
After his retirement, Irish led the Hearst Foundations’ Eastern team alongside Paul “Dino” Dinovitz, executive director and head of its Western operations.
Separate from the corporation, the Hearst Foundations — which includes the William Randolph Hearst Foundation of California the Hearst Foundation Inc. of New York — are national philanthropic resources for organizations working in the fields of culture, education, health and social services.
In addition, the William Randolph Hearst Foundation operates two programs, the United States Senate Youth Program and the Journalism Awards Program. Since its inception, the foundations have made more than 22,200 grants to 6,300 organizations, totaling more than $1.4 billion in funds awarded. “George was a member of our family,” said William Randolph Hearst III, chairman of the board of directors of Hearst, president of the William Randolph Hearst Foundation and a director of the Hearst Foundation Inc. “We are deeply saddened by his passing but filled with gratitude for his many years of stewardship, professional wisdom and, especially, his friendship.”
Virginia Hearst Randt, president of the Hearst Foundation, said Irish “made the world a better place in business, in philanthropy and as a friend.”
Irish served during his newspaper career on the boards of the Newspaper Association of America (now known as the News Media Alliance), the United Way of New York City, the International Center for Journalists, the Read Foundation, the Nieman Foundation board of advisers and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism’s board of visitors. He served as president, chairman and director of the American Press Institute, which honored Irish with its Lifetime Achievement Award in 2006.
Irish, who grew up in Ohio, graduated from Millikin University in Decatur, Ill., and was named its Young Alumnus of the Year in 1976. He went on to serve as chairman of its board of trustees.
Irish was predeceased by his first wife, Mary Rettig Irish, in 2005. He is survived by daughter Sandra Irish Draper, her husband, Kyle Thomas Draper, and their son, Carson Irish Draper, of Denton, Texas; and daughter Christine Irish Sheedy, her husband, Malcolm Joseph Sheedy, and their sons, Samuel Joseph Sheedy, and Luke Butler Sheedy, of Dallas. A third daughter, Diane Leslie Irish, died in infancy. Irish is also survived by his brothers, Charles Irish of Centerville, Ohio, and John Irish of Toledo, Ohio. He was predeceased by his brother Thomas Patrick “Pat” Irish.
He is also survived by his wife, Jeannie Wetherill Irish; stepdaughter, Jayne Ann Puccio, her husband, William J. Puccio and their children, Natalie and Charlie, of Newtown, Pa.; and stepdaughter, Amy Wetherill Cooley, her husband, Michael Cooley, and their children, Alexandra and Anna Cooley, of Villanova, Pa. The Hearst Newspaper Group is comprised of 24 daily papers and 52 weeklies, including The San Francisco Chronicle, Houston Chronicle, San Antonio Express-News, Albany (N.Y.) Times Union and the Hearst Connecticut Media Group.