Leading Sunday Times journalist who was the first editor of its groundbreaking investigative Insight unit
Ron Hall, a former top executive of the Sunday Times in its pre-Murdoch golden era, has died aged 79. Hall's distinctions were many: first editor of the paper's successful investigative unit, Insight; dominant force behind its exposures of the Profumo affair, later to evolve into a book, Scandal 63; inventor of the words Rachmanism and Rachmanite following its revelations about Peter Rachman's violence against his tenants; and editor of the Sunday Times magazine.
A perpetual pipe-smoker, Hall sometimes would puff silently and sceptically at editorial conferences when a news editor or foreign editor enthused about a possible scoop ahead. The resulting smoke at times would blur an intensely furrowed brow. Then the pipe would briefly leave his mouth and Hall would glance at the newspaper's editor, Harold Evans, before uttering "Huh!" or perhaps "Bullshit!" in a growly voice. He could hone his rebuffs of others as sharply as he could deflect barbs towards himself. Yet he was extremely popular with all staff: curt but clever, reserved but resourceful – "a scholar in scepticism who burned on a slow fuse" – as Evans put it in his autobiography.
Even when hosting extravagant parties for friends and colleagues at his home in Hampstead, north London, Hall would be the last one to speak in the language of jaunty persiflage. Instead he preferred the whispers of intrigues and backstair influences, his eyes brightening behind thick spectacles at, for example, the prospect of tackling a nauseous mixture of luxury, crime and flunkyism in the higher ranks of society.
He was born in Sheffield, the son of a builder. At Dronfield, the local school, he was head boy. On going to Pembroke College, Cambridge, to study mathematics and statistics, he married Ruth, who had been Dronfield's head girl and who later became an acclaimed harpsichordist. She died of a brain aneurysm in 1981, aged 48.
A journalist colleague, Magnus Linklater, recalls Hall's early insistence on accuracy: "[At university] he once attended a lecture where a graph was shown on intersecting curves in economics. The lecturer announced that anyone who grasped the implications of the curves did not need to attend the rest of his lectures. Hall, who did so, got up and walked out."
Hall started as a journalist on the Glasgow Herald before moving to the Daily Mirror, where he was acknowledged as a great headline writer. Then he and two other fast-rising journalists, Clive Irving and Jeremy Wallington, launched Topic, a news magazine. When it folded, in 1962, the talented trio joined the Sunday Times on the invitation of the then editor, Denis Hamilton, who asked them to launch Insight. Hall was its first editor. Under him and his successors, such as Bruce Page, Lewis Chester, John Barry and Paul Eddy, it became the flagship of investigative journalism – to be copied by other newspapers such as the Boston Globe and the Washington Post.
For Hall, truth came before style, although in editing and headlining he was a natural stylist. Like all his colleagues, he was deeply shocked when in 1981 Rupert Murdoch bought the Times and the Sunday Times from the Thomson Organisation, which had long been exasperated by print-union strikes. Evans was transferred to the editorship of the Times and replaced at the Sunday paper by his deputy, Frank Giles, despite the fact that Giles had been anxious to retire.
The two more eligible candidates for the Sunday editorship were Hall and Hugo Young, the cerebral leader writer and political commentator. But the new proprietor seemed unmoved by matters cerebral, preferring elbows. In 1982, he even instructed Hall, as Giles's deputy, to "use your elbows, Ron". When Hall declined, he was fired. Meanwhile, an alienated Young was warmly welcomed by the Guardian.
Murdoch told a colleague that Hall and Young "were stuck-up layabouts". As Harry Evans recorded in his 1984 book, Good Times, Bad Times, "The sacking of Hall deprived the Sunday Times … of a tough original intellect."
After a spell as associate editor of the short-lived London Daily News, Hall became London editor of Condé Nast's Traveler magazine, achieving considerable success and acclaim. He then married his former secretary at the Sunday Times, the much admired Christine Walker, who had stayed on as travel editor of the paper. That marriage was dissolved in 2002, and six years later Hall married Pat Glossop, a research editor on Traveler.
For the last decade of his life, Hall suffered from Parkinson's disease.
He is survived by Pat.
• Ron Hall, journalist and newspaper executive, born 28 July 1934; died 20 January 2014