The Sun’s saucy take on the elections for London Mayor. 

“His team works over time trying to hide Obama’s dirty little secret. He is… get this…a cigarette smoker.”

Ten points to Fox News for serious political coverage.  

Glasgow’s Evening Times has launched 24 community websites. Readers can upload news , pictures, notices and events. They have listings for schools, doctors and museums. Few people have posted comments yet, but the sites look promising. They are clean and very interactive.

Community websites can profit from surburan news. For example, bollards have been built at my local shopping centre. A slab pavement has been tarmacked and arrows painted on the car park floor. The Nottingham Evening Post will never cover this, but most people living in the area are vaguely interested in it because it affects them. There’s a huge gap in the market for this kind of banal surburan news.

Cornwall and Devon Media have made a wiki which can be editied by readers. It is similar idea to the Evening Times’ community sites. Both prove that community and citizen journalism can work alongside the big stories and scandals in the main paper. If I was an editor or owner I’d be snapping up these community patches as fast as possible.

The student investigative peice below is now on Press Gazette, courtesy of Dave Lee. Cheers buddy!

Picture: Daily Mail

Heather Mills enjoying the attention outside the High Court.  I really like this picture!

Award winning investigative journalist Steve Boulton was at UCLan giving a lecture. His work includes Ryanair: Caught Napping. Read about the lecture here.

A darkly dressed reporter hiding in alleyways was how I imagined investigative journalism. They would discreetly take notes before slipping off alone into the night.

Things were different when I went undercover to expose a Chinese student at the University of Central Lancashire who was selling plagiarised essays . Far from being secretive, the Pluto Editor Ed Walker was telling university directors and the Students’ Union President what was happening every day.

Without their support we risked being expelled. Consider this if you are thinking about investigative reporting with your student paper, because it will probably involve breaking some rules. William Stead did this in 1885 when he exposed the child sex trade in Victorian London. Mark Daly did it in 2003 when exposing racism in the police force for the BBC 1 documentary The Secret Policeman.

Joining the company and receiving money for essays meant that I was breaking university rules. By getting the University on side we were guaranteeing my safety.
They also made the investigation a bit easier by providing a fake email address, a library card and security guards when we met “Jimmy”, the student running the scam.

There was pressure to succeed with more people involved. Thankfully, me and Ed Walker spent a lot of time planning different situations.
A touch of paranoia about “Jimmy” rumbling us ensured we took extra care. Immediately Ed started locking his office door whenever he left. He began drawing the blinds to hide a white board we were using as an investigation timeline. At one point we even came up with a code name for the investigation, but stopped short of buying two way radios and James Bond style watches.
As Ed worked behind the scenes I was communicating with Jimmy by email. This written correspondence was brilliant evidence for proving what had been going on – both for the university’s disciplinary hearing and if necessary, court proceedings. Keeping a diary with transcribed phone calls was useful when I started writing the story.

The investigation took three weeks, but it felt much longer. There is a lot of stress doing large projects – especially when you are studying for a degree too. The endurance of the Channel 4 Dispatches reporters who posed as air hostesses in the documentary Ryanair Caught:Napping  is impressive. Student journalists need to figure out how much time they are willing to spend on undercover work.  

As soon as we had enough evidence we ran the story. BBC North West Tonight followed it up on TV, the Preston Citizen splashed it and The Lancashire Evening Post used it.
Many international students were panicking that they might be found out – or that they would have to start writing essays. Interestingly, there was speculation on Chinese internet forums about how we discovered the scam. But like all good journalists, I’m not revealing my sources!

Just had to post this one. Young Max Gogarty has been savaged for his travel blog on the Guardian.  His maiden post about his imminent backpacking trip has been met with hundreds of vitriolic responses  from readers. It’s the apparent nepotism, rather than the dull post which has sparked outrage. His dad is a renowned travel writer who has written for the Guardian and the Times among others.

The travel editor defended his new appointment. But still, I don’t feel sorry for him.

How’s this for a peice of citizen journalism? I get the feeling that who ever filmed it must  know that planes and gale forces wind make interesting video. Just imagine being on board. Scary.

Plane narrowly avoids disaster in high winds