Reporters

Ruth O’Reilly is editor of The Detail. She co-founded Below the Radar with Trevor Birney in 2006, having won two Royal Television Society awards for current affairs programmes.
Her 22 years in journalism started in The Irish News in Belfast and encompasses newspapers, TV, radio as well as a four-year stint with the Press Association in Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic.

Kathryn Torney started her journalism career in 1996 as a graduate trainee with the Belfast Telegraph. She was appointed education correspondent for the newspaper in 1999 and held this post until the end of 2010. Kathryn has a special interest in data journalism and Freedom of Information. She has won several awards for her journalism and was shortlisted and received an honourary mention in the international Data Journalism Awards 2012.

Steven McCaffery joined The Detail in October 2012, after six years at Press Association Ireland where he was Deputy Editor, with particular responsibility for the organisation’s political output on both sides of the border. Prior to this, Steven was News Editor of The Irish News, during which he played a central role in the paper’s multi award-winning investigative output, including his own investigations into key events of the late 1990s and 2000s. His work on collusion between the State and paramilitaries in Northern Ireland was commended by Amnesty International.

Barry McCaffrey started as a journalist with the Down Democrat in 1996 before joining the North Belfast News in 1998. In 2001, he started work at the Irish News. He has also worked for Ireland on Sunday, Sunday Business Post and Irish Voice. Barry wrote the biography of Belfast’s first Sinn Fein mayor Alex Maskey.

Niall McCracken joined Below The Radar in July 2008, having completed his post graduate diploma in Broadcast Journalism at the University of Sheffield. After working in BBC and commercial radio, he returned to Northern Ireland where he was first employed as a video journalist and won a CIPR Press Award for his work with Fermanagh TV. He later worked as a researcher on several of BTR’s programmes and documentaries for the BBC, including “In Your Corner”, “Robinson” and “Hume”. He shoots and edits the video for The Detail and has broken several stories for the site focusing on accountability in healthcare. He is the most recent recipient of the CIPR Media award’s Newcomer of the Year and the Martin O’Hagan memorial bursary.

Ruth Blacker is a video editor trainee working on The Detail. She joined Below the Radar in 2010 after applying for the role through the NI Screen Post 2010 scheme. Prior to this Ruth has worked as an assistant for Inferno, Yellow Moon and Waddell Media.