One of the oldest newspapers in Ireland has been celebrating its 175th anniversary.

The Impartial Reporter marked the milestone with a luncheon attended by Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Mandelson – and a £50,000 donation to the Fermanagh Trust, which promotes social and community development.

The paper – named Best Paid-for Weekly in Northern Ireland by the Newspaper Society last week – has also undergone a revamp. It remains broadsheet, but with narrower pages, and has been split into two sections. Extra colour has been added and a more modern masthead has replaced the old English type.

“This has met mixed reaction,” said managing editor Denzil McDaniel.

“Some people don’t like the change, others do. We felt it was time to freshen things up for our younger readers, while retaining our identity for people who have enjoyed the paper for years.”

The paper is thought to hold the world record for the longest ownership in one family.

Only five generations of the Trimble family have managed the paper since it was launched by William Trimble, a fiery Ulster-Scotch Presbyterian, who served his apprenticeship as a printer in Dublin and got up at 5am each day to read six chapters of the Bible before starting work.

He was a crusading journalist with a cause – defending tenant farmers who were being badly treated by absentee landlords – and became known as the Farmer’s Friend.

The Reporter’s first edition was priced six-and-a-half old pence, a princely sum in 1825, and the first editorial declared: “Regardless alike of the frowns of party, and the smiles of power, we shall state our own convictions on all subjects which come under our review. We shall defend the Protestant when we consider him in the right, and the Roman Catholic may expect similar treatment.”

For the next 142 years, three men ran the Reporter as old-style editor-proprietors: Trimble, who married twice and fathered 26 children, his son William Copeland Trimble, whose journalistic career lasted almost 70 years; and his grandson, William Egbert Trimble.

Egbert’s daughter, Joan Trimble, took over the paper in 1967 and remains chairman of the board at the age of 85, but day-to-day management has been in the hands of her daughter, managing director Joanna McVey, for the past 10 years.

Mrs McVey said: “We have been determined to survive as an independent. We have always moved with the times while remaining true to our principles. One of our great strengths is that we are in touch with the local community that we serve.”

Today, the paper’s offices are still at the premises where William and Jane Trimble set up home 175 years ago, in East Bridge Street, Enniskillen – the town where 11 people were killed and 63 injured by an IRA bomb on Remembrance Day, 1987.

And family ties do not stop with the owners – assistant editor Sarah Saunderson’s grandfather, Bernie, used to run the printing presses, and reporter Lily Dane’s father, Mervyn, was long-time reporter and editor. Making up the journalistic staff are Brian Donaldson, Maurice Kennedy, Chris Donegan, Brian O’Loughlin and newly-appointed Linda McKee, plus photographer Raymond Humphreys.

Raymond is the subject of a full-page feature in a high-quality, 66-page colour magazine published to mark the paper’s anniversary.

He was on his way to the Cenotaph to cover the remembrance service for the paper when the IRA bomb exploded.

He parked his car and ran towards the war memorial. His first concern was for his two children, who were at Sunday school and were due to meet him. He discovered they were still in the church hall and returned to the scene of the bomb.

“As a journalist, it was Raymond’s natural reaction to start taking photographs and without really thinking about it, he shot four rolls of film,” the magazine says.

“Being one of the first photographers on the scene, his work was to become one of the main records of the incident.

“It was really about an hour or so after the explosion he realised how distressing it all was. The names of the dead and injured filtered through and he knew them all.

“Those images of the Enniskillen Bomb appeared in national newspapers the next day and the photographs, which still appear from time to time, were wired around the world.”

Click here to read Joan Trimble’s early memories of the Impartial reporter.

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