The Gown celebrates 60th anniversary 
17 April 2015
One of the oldest student newspapers in the UK - and Ireland’s longest-established - which covers news, features, sport and opinion at Queen's, celebrates the 60th anniversary of its first issue this month.
Founded by US medical student Richard Herman, with the help of a few postgraduate students and Dr Jack Pritchard, Professor of Anatomy (1952-79), the first issue – an eight-page tabloid, which sold for 4d – appeared on Tuesday, April 26, 1955.
The Gown has survived sixty years of unprecedented historical change which included the expansion and development of the University, the advent of rock n’ roll, the Civil Rights movement followed by The Troubles, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the ending of apartheid, ceasefires and the peace process. The paper regularly covered the now recently demised Belfast Festival at Queen’s, recorded wins and losses of thousands of University sporting teams and, in 1981, reviewed a small unknown band called U2, who played their second ever gig at Queen’s.
Over sixty years The Gown produced some of today’s (and yesterday’s) best known local – and indeed national – journalists. Household names such as Conor O’Cleary (Irish Times), Alf McCreary (Belfast Telegraph), David Montgomery (Editor, Mirror Group newspapers), Martyn Turner (Irish Times cartoonist) and Henry McDonald (Observer), all had regular by-lines. Others, such as Nick Ross (BBC) Maggie Taggart (BBC NI) and Lynda Gilby (Sunday Life) were contributors.
In the 1960s and early 1970s, when it was published and sold fortnightly, it won the coveted Irish Times title of Best Student Newspaper in Ireland and came first in the Education Times Young Newspaper competition.
By the end of the 70s funding problems started to dog the paper and it moved from a fortnightly to a monthly print run. During the 1980s, when it seemed to lurch from issue to irregular issue, it did manage to produce a separate Gown Literary Supplement, an A4 magazine format for book and poetry enthusiasts. By then coming out as a free-sheet, The Gown featured a number of weighty political interviews with Garret Fitzgerald, Enoch Powell, Gerry Adams and David Owen.
Following a Belfast Telegraph story about its impending demise, the paper managed to turn itself around, though not without the odd financial and editorial hiccup along the way. Ever-present issues of bilingualism and the playing (or not) of the National Anthem at graduation ceremonies, not to mention a student conspiracy to unseat Jim Molyneaux MP, made for some stimulating and excellent local reporting. Sadly, in 2003 the paper had to fold temporarily, following a dispute with a Students’ Union election candidate. Reborn later that year, the paper is currently enjoying a period of relative stability.
The Gown currently prints around 3,000 copies per edition, which are available in the south Belfast and the Queen’s area, free of charge.
At its heart The Gown has, over sixty years stoutly maintained its independence while continuing to serve as one of the few regular, student-friendly, student-serving, student-run features of Queen’s student life.
An exhibition marking The Gown’s milestone anniversary runs in the Naughton Gallery at Queen’s until 3 May. You can like The Gown on Facebook or follow the paper on Twitter.
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