O'Reilly appointed editor of `Magill'

Emily O'Reilly, political editor of the Sunday Business Post, has been appointed editor of the monthly news magazine, Magill.

She is to leave the Sunday Business Post early next year, and the first edition of Magill under her editorship will appear in February.

The journalist and author was approached to fill the post by the owner of the magazine, Hoson Publishing. She is a former political correspondent with the Irish Press and also worked with the Sunday Tribune, RTE and Radio Ireland.

The post has been vacant since October, when the editor and founder, Mr Vincent Browne, sold the magazine. He agreed to stay in an advisory role for 13 issues but ceased to be editor.

Ms O'Reilly was at the centre of controversy earlier this year after the publication of her biography, Veronica Guerin: the Life and Death of a Crime Reporter, which was critical of its subject in some respects.

Her other books include Masterminds of the Right, a study of conservative Catholic groups, and Candidate, an account of the 1990 presidential campaign.

She joined the Sunday Business Post in May 1994. In the same year, she unsuccessfully sought the post of editor of the Sunday Tribune when it became vacant.

She has also worked extensively in broadcasting and co-presented the morning news programme on Radio Ireland when the station was opened in 1997.

Magill was relaunched in August 1997 after a six-year gap, with Mr Browne as editor and publisher. He founded the magazine in 1975.

The magazine has a distinguished history of political reporting and counts among its former editors the writer Colm Toibin and the Irish Times columnists John Waters and Fintan O'Toole.