IRELAND
The University Observer
Contributed by Kate Rothwell, Deputy Editor on Tuesday, 10 January 2012
I once asked Mary Raftery for tips on being a good journalist, and she said to always start your articles with a short sentence. So here it goes:
Former UCDSU Education Officer and UCD student Mary Raftery has passed away.
Student politician turned journalist, last September she spoke in an interview of her time in UCD, which she spent “doing a lot less engineering than I should have and getting a lot more involved with the Students’ Union and the student newspaper.”
She worked as a sub-editor and writer for the In Dublin magazine, before moving on to work for the current affairs publication Magill in 1984, and later for RTÉ until leaving in 2002.
The word that has been mentioned again and again in tributes to her is “relentless”. This relentlessness led to her producing and directing States of Fear, a documentary series that revealed the physical and sexual abuse suffered by children in Irish industrial schools and residential institutions.
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