Derry Journal wins front page award for Bloody Sunday anniversary

The Derry Journal is the island of Ireland's oldest regional newspaper

The Derry Journal has won a prestigious award for its special edition marking the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday.

The paper's front page, published in January last year, showed a photo of a man crawling to the aid of Paddy Doherty.

Mr Doherty was one of the 13 people who were shot dead on the 30 January 1972.

The front page was deemed the best of 2022 after winning a public vote run by the journalist and media specialist organisation Hold the Front Page.

It is the Journal's second award for its coverage of the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday.

This award comes after the paper collected another front page award for the same edition at a National World awards ceremony in Leeds in October.

• What happened on Bloody Sunday?

The special edition was dedicated to those killed and wounded that day, to the victims' families and to the people of Derry who have backed the families' long campaign for truth and justice.

The bi-weekly paper, the island of Ireland's oldest regional newspaper, celebrated its 250th birthday in June last year, having started life as the Londonderry Journal and General Advertiser in 1772.

'An act of heroism'

Derry Journal editor Brendan McDaid told BBC Radio Foyle that the image on the front page captured "humanity amidst all the horror that was going on at the time".

He said the image is of Paddy Walsh attempting to reach the fatally-wounded Paddy Doherty.

"It was an act of heroism really and we thought it was a very striking image and a very fitting image for what was contained in that edition," he said.

Mr McDaid said the headline "Never Forget" which accompanied the photo referred to "never forgetting what happened, never forgetting what followed and how far we have come since then".