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May 10, 2011

News Letter prints on Sunday after ‘shambolic’ election

By Andrew Pugh

Johnston Press-owned Northern Ireland daily the News Letter produced a Sunday edition for the first time since 1990s to cover last week’s Assembly elections.

The paper was forced to produce the special edition after learning the results of the count were delayed and would not make it into its print edition on Saturday.

Editor Darwin Templeton said: ‘We had planned to do the special edition when it became known that some results would not be declared until Saturday, but as it turned out, because of shambolic scenes at the counts, most seats were not decided until Saturday.”

He added: ‘On the one hand this was a stroke of luck for us, but it also meant that our team had a frantic finish on Saturday evening.

‘In the end we went to press at 9.30pm (having aimed for 7pm) and even then had only 105 of the 108 seats. We also captured Peter Robinson’s emotional speech in which he dedicated his election triumph to murdered police officer Ronan Kerr.”

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