obituaries BRIAN LOUGHEED JAY MCGAGHARAN


Jackie McKeown


Belfast branch NUJ member Jackie McKeown went to great lengths to get stories – including taking a job in a brothel as a maid and travelling to Egypt with a mother aiming to get back her three children. The Northern Irish journalist died suddenly on July 7 at her home in Newry aged 56. Her colleagues described her reporting work as ‘fearless and tenacious’, saying she was ‘wonderful’ with people. Jackie was born in Banbridge, Co


Down, in 1967; her family fled the violence in Northern Ireland and moved to England in 1972, settling in Croydon, south London. She studied journalism in her early 20s in the mid 1980s, starting as an NCTJ trainee on titles at the Croydon Advertiser, including the Caterham News, where a former colleague told of her passion to ‘expose truth’. She later worked at newspapers


including the London Evening Standard and the Sunday Mirror. Her sister Tara told how for one story she was dispatched to go undercover as a maid in a brothel. For the Sunday Mirror, she


travelled to Egypt with an English mother aiming to get back her three children. Her ex-husband had abducted them in England and taken them to Cairo. After several years of London reporting, Jackie moved to Northern Ireland in the early 1990s. In her early days, she lived in Banbridge, commuting to Newry to work on the Newry Democrat, before settling in Newry.


26 | theJournalist A former colleague at the Newry


Democrat described how Jackie deployed her London experience. “We thought we were great doing our little features. She just came along and she blew us into smithereens,” said Mary Kennedy. “She was a genius – a trailblazer.” Jackie also reported for media


including the Sunday Life, The Examiner in Crossmaglen and with Lisburn newspaper The Ulster Star – for which she was named as IPR Provincial Journalist of the Year. In 1995, she began work with the


UTV Kelly show as a TV researcher. Later, Jackie reported on the 1998


Omagh bombing. She was news editor at the News Letter in Belfast and editor of the Newry Democrat from 2007 for two years. Under her watch, the Newry


Democrat was named as the top weekly newspaper of the year in Northern Ireland at the Chartered Institute for Public Relations Press and Broadcast Awards in 2009. Jackie moved into subediting and


worked for titles including the Irish Independent, Irish Daily Mail, Irish Mirror and the Irish Daily Star. Throughout her career, Jackie was a committed NUJ member. “Basically, you weren’t a real journalist if you weren’t in it,” Tara said. “That’s what she used to say.” Jackie is survived by her daughter Ciara, her mother Rosa van Wijk (her late father was Alan McKeown) and her sister Tara McKeown.


Jeff Farrell


Rosetta Donnelly


Rosetta Donnelly, who died in her 63rd year after a long illness, was a member of Derry North West Ireland branch and former deputy editor of the weekly Ulster Herald in Omagh. She spent her entire career of almost a quarter of a century with the Ulster Herald. As deputy editor, she was known for encouraging colleagues. Any criticism was always constructive. She was part of the team that oversaw major changes in the paper, including the switch to tabloid format after more than a century as a broadsheet. She took particular pride in


positive personal stories. That was part of a deep concern for readers. She was sensitive to the impact of her work on the community. Inevitably, she had to work on


many hard stories. Her journalistic career began with a baptism of fire. She had to cover the public inquiry into a proposed gold mine just outside Omagh which, at the time, was the longest public inquiry in Northern Ireland.


By far the most difficult story for


her, as it was for other local journalists, was the Omagh bombing of August 1998. This killed 29 people in the worst atrocity of Northern Ireland’s Troubles. That afternoon, she had been in town shopping with her two daughters. They narrowly missed the explosion. She then had to throw herself into reporting the events. In covering these, she forged particularly close links with some of the victims.


Rosetta was born Rosetta Farry


in November 1960, ninth of 10 children to Patrick and Sarah-Ellen Farry (née Campbell). They lived on a farm a couple of miles outside the Co Tyrone village of Trillick. Rosetta did not intend to be a


journalist. After school, she spent time as an au pair in Spain. She attended Belfast’s College of Business Studies and qualified as bilingual secretary, gaining the ability to write shorthand in English, Spanish, French and German. For some years, she worked in administration, then as a lifeguard, at the district council. In the late 1980s, she saw an


advertisement for a post as a journalist with the Ulster Herald. Initially, she was interested but reluctant to apply. Friends and family encouraged her, and she was appointed. Rapidly, she fell in love with journalism. In her late 30s, she returned to education, graduating with an MA in journalism. Huntington’s disease cruelly


forced her to retire in 2012. She became a driving force behind the local Huntington’s support group. Forced retirement allowed her long trips to Australia, where her daughters lived for some years. She is remembered for loving life, family, music and her social life. She is survived by daughters Megan and Danielle, sons-in-law, four grandchildren and four brothers and three sisters.


Anton McCabe


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28