Ex-Telegraph news editor dies

Norman Jenkinson, news editor of the Belfast Telegraph during the worst years of the violence in the North, has died. He was 69.

Former colleagues paid tribute to his work today, among them former Telegraph editor Roy Lilley.

He said: “His outstanding quality was that he was completely unflappable whatever the crisis. Jenks was the essence of calm. In those times it was a strength which inspired confidence all around him.”

Many reporters who went on to become major figures in British and Irish journalism, among them the BBC’s Gavin Esler, worked for him.

He was in charge of the Telegraph reporting staff when the newspaper’s office in Royal Avenue was bombed by the IRA in 1976. But even though virtually every window in the newsroom was blown in, he helped produce the following day’s paper, which became known as the Penny Marvel.

Mr Jenkinson became ill at Christmas and died in Belfast City Hospital yesterday.

He retired in 1993 and went to live in Newcastle, Co Down, where his funeral will take place tomorrow following Requiem Mass in St Patrick’s Church, Bryansford.

He is survived by his wife Marlene and daughters Sonia and Nicola.