The Winner: Georgina Mills

First prize went to Georgina Mills, 21, from Reading University.

Georgina won £250.

Here is her piece:

The Noughties – Has it been a decade of despair or the dawn of an exciting new era?

By Georgina Mills

The Noughties have been full of drama, success and disaster. The millennium was a highly anticipated event and kicked off the decade with huge displays of fireworks and celebrations (what happened to the expected millennium bug is anyone’s guess). But looking into the future, have we helped or hindered ourselves after this memorable era?

Technology has reached a stage of infinite possibilities; the Noughties have bought us the Ipod, the Xbox and the Wii. The internet itself has reached a new level of superiority, it is estimated that 1.67 billion people make use of it and who could ignore the invention of Wikipedia in 2001. Never again would a student search high and low for researching an essay!

Celebrity fever reached a new level in the Noughties, everyone is talking about Posh and Becks, Brad and Angelina, even John and Edward. Every outfit is criticised, every day without make-up publicised and heaven forbid they should get a bit tipsy. Just a few months ago Michael Jackson, the King of Pop, died. The once great ‘moonwalker’ became dependant on prescription drugs, perhaps through the pressure of stardom, until sadly one dose went wrong.

Crime has dominated the news in the last 10 years with some being unthinkable. The kidnaps of Natascha Kampusch and Elisabeth Fritzl shocked the world, and the Beslan School massacre in which over 300 people were shot was horrendous to say the least. And of course the September the 11^th terrorist attacks in 2001 were so unexpected the world stood still for a moment, in utter shock.

Barack Obama re-wrote the history books by becoming the first black president, a move which has changed equality beyond recognition. In the UK we have seen Tony Blair be replaced by Gordon Brown. These leaders have a number of hard, often opposed, decisions to make in regards to sending troops out to Afghanistan and Iraq.

With all of this going on it is sometimes easy to forget that we live in a world that is quite fragile. As a species, humans rely solely on the earth and the environment around them to survive. As the world becomes more urbanized, people start to lose a connection with nature and the reality of the earth. There have been so many great advances with technology, especially in the last 10 years, that they are becoming the norm. The activities that we do regularly like driving, using electricity and travelling to other countries are very damaging to the environment because of one thing: greenhouse gases. Greenhouse gases are one of the main factors causing climate change, an often misunderstood subject.

Climate change is in the news all the time and the dangers and effects are becoming more and more serious. The temperature of the earth has increased by 0.7^o in the last century and is expected to keep increasing. In recent years, especially in the Noughties, scientists have started to understand the effects of climate change and are trying to communicate it to the general public. But is the message going through?

It has been proven that 40% of the greenhouse gas emissions in the UK come directly from individuals. We have all seen the adverts on the television asking us to only drive when necessary and to turn our washing machines down, but the reality is most people will leave it for someone else to do, or take the opinion that an individual’s action cannot change a worldwide problem.

The consequences of climate change could be very damaging, and despite scientists being able to predict the changes; the reality is we don’t know what is going to happen. There are three main effects of climate change that would directly affect humans; fire, flood and heat waves. All three of these effects are expected to become more frequent as a result of climate change. These warnings are becoming all the more relevant with the recent flood in Cumbria a couple of weeks ago. Although no-one was killed by the flood itself, PC Bill Barker was tragically killed whilst helping people escape. 200 people had to be rescued and water rose to 2.5m in some places.  Even once the water has disappeared the people of Cumbria are faced with devastating damage to their homes. Heat waves themselves may not seem to be a problem, we all enjoy a bit of sun now and again. But they are particularly dangerous; the European heat wave of 2003 killed 30,000 people.

As we come to the end of the Noughties there is a 10 day conference in Copenhagen on climate change, starting on the 7^th December. Hopefully action will be taken to deal with this damaging issue. The Noughties may have taught us ‘what not to wear’ and ‘who’s who’ in the celebrity world, but the world as we know it may soon be a very different place. If action is not taken to deal with climate change then we may look back on the Noughties as simply a golden age before disaster.

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Marcus Greenslade from Reading University came second and won £100.

Here’s his entry.

“Has the Noughties been a decade of despair or the dawn of an exciting new era?”

I’m British. Cynicism is within me in the same way that weapons of mass destruction were within Iraq – nobody can prove it’s there, but suspicions are strong enough as to lead to drastic action. “Vote for Change”, ran Obama’s campaign slogan as he determined to lead people out of their disillusionment and into a new era of prosperity.

Unfortunately, counter-terrorism has been a far bigger priority than counter-cynicism.  Having survived the Millennium Bug, the media has been handed a sack full of other stories to scare people with, starting with the al-Qaeda attacks all the way through to a never-ending economic crisis caused solely by Gordon Brown’s incompetence. The opinions of the media and their effects on the opinions of the masses is what I despair at most. Bad news still sells, and that is what we are subjected to.

However, the media has been given plenty of ammunition over the years. Terrorist attacks such as 9/11 and 7/7, the Iraq War and the continuation of conflicts in the Middle East, increasing concerns over climate change, the apparent offense to democracy that was Gordon Brown’s succession of Tony Blair, and the government scandals such as the massive amount of personal data being lost and, of course, the expenses scandal. And then all of the old worries from previous decades have been dragged over too – the seemingly failing NHS system, the increasingly disproportionate number of elderly citizens and their pensions (or lack of). All of this clearly isn’t just negative spin.

Barrack Obama saw the weight of the world dropped on his shoulders in 2008. A year later, people pine that he has been ineffectual and has let them down. This, I would argue, is just cynicism. Of course he didn’t live up to expectations – people seemed to believe that he was like Morgan Freeman in ‘Bruce Almighty’. It is far too early to make such judgement calls on his performance. Although his supporters are somewhat quieter than they were in 2008, Obama is still the man who the world has put their faith in for carving a better future.

Similarly, Gordon Brown has been demonised for his handling of the economic crisis. His approach has been so appallingly awful that it was mirrored across the globe. Hmm. David Cameron’s economic policy is so great that when the Japanese used it in the early nineties, they got stuck in a recession that lasted ten years. Hmm. This is not a defence of Brown’s performance as a Prime Minister overall, but it is embarrassing to see how quickly the paper’s have lined up behind Cameron. A recent ICM poll for the Guardian showed that 53% of those interviewed would be angry or disappointed if Labour won the 2010 election, while 36% said the same of the Tories. This to the Guardian is fantastic news for the Tories. But actually, that’s 89% of people disillusioned with both of the main contenders. And everyone says a vote for Lib Dem is a wasted vote, so there is no solution there either. There is widespread despair at our politicians and their policies, and the scandals have generated a distinct lack of trust. I am forced to concede that the political future for Britain looks bleak.

However, we can have faith in our sporting industry. The cynics have attacked our hosting of the 2012 Olympics, readily prepared for the UK’s global embarrassment. And yes, we may not have qualified for the World or European Cups in football. But Capello has brought an exciting new dimension to the English football team, and huge successes in recent Olympic Games mean that we can only expect better when our athletes compete on home turf.

The Noughties has been a decade that sees the straw that breaks the camel’s back. What people wanted was a decade of solutions being provided, but the introduction of new problems saw a diversion of attention, a lack of achievement made anywhere. Progress through time was meant to be linked to advances in society, and yet this has very much proved not to be the case. Or at least, so the media would have us believe.

In truth, ‘proved’ should be replaced with ‘appeared’. Actually, progress has been made. Yes, the Middle East might be in turmoil, but al-Qaeda has been dramatically weakened over the decade. There is a lot of talk about an “unwinnable war”, but there is hope in that progress has been made and that al-Qaeda does not have the support or the resources to keep fighting for as long as counter-insurgency forces do.

Similarly, climate change may not have been ‘dealt with’, but again there has been progress. The Copenhagen Summit is seeing a revival of interest following Obama’s and Hu’s agreement that a deal at Copenhagen should be reached. Although the cynics shout “I’ll believe it when I see it”, there is renewed hope. I’m certainly hopeful. It would be a fantastic way to end the decade on a high.

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Robin Morgan, from Cardiff University’s Gair Rhydd, won the Third Prize of £50 with this entry.

The Noughties:

‘Has it been a decade of despair or the dawn of an exciting new era?’

The date is 31^st December 1999. It’s coming up to midnight. I’m standing on my street, a full glass of champagne in hand (I’d only sipped at it, I hate the bloody stuff), and I’m linking arms with people I only vaguely know from when I’ve kicked my football against their car and apologised, hurriedly.

I was ten years old, in my defence. Not some social delinquent who attacks transport with sports equipment. Although I won’t speak too soon, maybe fifty years from now I’ll be writing a similar essay on how that game has made it into the Olympics. Probably not.

The noughties did start out in that fashion, for me at least. Personally, the decade saw me grow into the ‘man’ I am. Note the inverted commas. I’m not particularly manly. This decade, I failed my driving test, went to high school, did my GCSE’s, A-levels, went to university, moved out of my parent’s house, and kissed a girl. And I liked it.

They weren’t done in that order, just to clarify. In my personal sense, of course this decade was exciting – I was growing up. I’ve got so many stories to tell, and more that I’ve forgotten. But it started out so badly.

Exhibit A: The ‘Noughties’. Are you serious? We’re dictating a decade to history as the camp, playful, tomfoolery ridden era, which epitomised the late 90s. Sure, I was a kid. But I also dressed up as Scary Spice in a Year 6 event. Camp, playful, and f***ing mortifying. I still don’t understand why my Mum allowed me to do that.

I’ve had countless more experiences that still jolt to the front of my mind when I’m trying to get to sleep. I think that’s just how my brain works. Reminds me of my failures. Don’t worry; this isn’t the formation of a suicide note. I’ll find out if I’ve won the £250 first. No pressure…

What have we seen in this decade? What technological, medical and social advancements have been made over the past ten years? No, bollocks to that – we’ve had Deal or No Deal. This premise seemingly gave birth to the rebirth of the love of the game show. And gave a plethora of stand-ups a chance to bash Noel Edmonds all over again. Years of hard-worked material instantly back up for use. Exciting, or despair? You be the judge.

In all seriousness though (and these are rarities in this essay, as I’m sure you can tell), the main talking point of the Decade That Shall Not Be Named is something has probably gone under the radar. It’s importance to global politics, international relations and social reasoning is unrelenting and unrivalled, yet none of us really know about it.

This might come as a shock to you – it certainly did to me – but there is something called The Internet that has shaped the last ten years in a way that only I will in the next ten. It gave democracy and the freedom of speech, to idiots.

Exhibit B: YouTube. Or to be more precise, the comments section of YouTube. This is where I pretend to be a lifeguard, saving the poor folk who are drowning in the gene pool. They are drowning, my good friends, because they are idiots.

I was forced, by the nature of comedy, to sign up for an account on YouTube, just so I could reply to one person’s post. On a video of two gentlemen who were rapping, one man had sophisticatedly informed people that “Dizzee Rascal and Tinchy Stryder are the biggest rappers in the UK right now.”

There was one problem. He had spelt ‘rappers’ with one ‘P’. Acting on instinct and my abilities as a Grammar Nazi, I quickly signed up and clicked to ‘Reply’ to his post.

The ‘reply’ function on YouTube is flawed. When you ‘reply’ to something, it doesn’t inform people what you have ‘replied’ to. It just shows your ‘reply’ as a standalone comment, floating around in the stupidity pool, trying to stay above water.

So therefore, on a video of two rappers, I had apparently said, off the top of my head, completely unprovoked, that they had both committed a terrible crime, when all I was trying to do was correct a spelling mistake and protect their names!

This was at the latter end of this decade called the Noughties, I should’ve learnt from my mortified mistakes nine years ago!

I thought I would just ignore it. Wrong again. I got an email instantly, not ‘replying’ to my post, but sending me a private message informing that I was making serious allegations.

Of course I didn’t reply. I closed down my account and I haven’t commented on a YouTube video ever since. I must have seemed like a ‘boy who cried wolf’, but didn’t even get the few weeks of fun when people believed me.

But this is what I’m trying to portray to you. The awkwardness of my life has, undoubtedly, dictated this soon-to-be-supernova of a decade as one of despair, of social embarrassment, but of stories that I can hopefully portray as sweeping generalisations that we’ve all been through.

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Over the last few weeks I’ve been looking at some of the key skills a reporter needs to develop. The posts so far have been about people skills, because part of the formula for success is, “who you know”. After this post, which is about putting all those contacts together in one safe place, I will move on to some more specific, practical skills, because “what you know” is the other half of the winning formula.

Tip #23 Keep A Contacts Book

One of the great things about being a journalist is that you don’t have to take a briefcase home with you every night, full of paperwork to read for the next morning.

However, it does help to have big pockets with room enough for a reporter’s notebook, a pen and your contacts book.

An extensive, well-maintained and up to date contacts book is a vital part of your equipment when you are covering daily news stories.

On the morning of May 12th 1994, the Labour Party Leader John Smith died suddenly, aged just 55.

On the Lunchtime News at ITN, the team had to react quickly to secure key political figures to give their reaction to the tragedy. The speed of ITN’s response was partly down to one producer and his contacts book. His job was to book guests to appear on the programme, and over the months and years before this date, he had made a point of collecting their numbers. Not just work numbers, but mobile numbers, home numbers and pager numbers.

As soon as the news broke, he hit the phones and ITN had every one of those guests live on air before the BBC. ITN won a Royal Television Society Award for its coverage of this major political event.

Incidentally, outside the world of news, it may seem strange for journalists to win awards for their reaction to a family tragedy. However, as I mentioned in my last post, those journalists have in the past had to report the death and disappearance of their own colleagues with the same speed and professionalism.

One of John Smith’s daughters, Sarah, was working as a producer at the BBC at the time. She has since joined ITN, where she is Washington Correspondent for Channel 4 News.

Sarah Smith, Channel 4 News. (c) Esthr

On a lighter note, a couple of years later my own contacts book came to the rescue of another producer on the Lunchtime News, who was chasing a story about the football star Paul Gascoigne.

Gazza’s childhood friend Jimmy Gardner had always kept an eye on the star footballer, even moving to Rome so that the two Geordies could go fishing together when Paul had finished training sessions for Lazio.

The tabloids had picked up on the friendship and revelled in Jimmy’s nickname – Five Bellies.

Don’t ask me how, but back in 1996 I had Jimmy’s home number in my contacts book and so I passed it over to my friend Chris, who had what Jamie Oliver would call a “pukka” Home Counties accent. Chris called the number and the conversation went something like this:

Newcastle: Hello.

London: Is that Mr Gardner?

Newcastle: It is, man.

London: Mr Jimmy Gardner?

Newcastle: Aye. How can I help you?

London: Well, I’m from ITN and I’m writing a story on Paul Gascoigne and I just wanted to check the facts out with you.

Newcastle: Oh, no, no, no, man. It’s me son you want, Five Bellies. And I’m afraid he’s out. Can you call back later?

On this occasion, the contacts book may not have helped to win an award, but it did allow us to follow the story up more quickly and to gain an intriguing insight into life in the Gardner household.

If you are a specialist writer, for instance working as a Showbiz Reporter, your contacts book can literally be what secures you a better job ahead of other journalists.

So, from your first day as a reporter start gathering those numbers and keeping them in a contacts book. You never know when they may come in handy. Today’s backbencher may become Prime Minister in a few years and unknown recording artists have a habit of becoming world-famous overnight sensations.

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Tip #22 Mimic Your Heroes

The best writers read a lot, the best songwriters listen to a lot of music and the best film directors watch a lot of movies. And when they come to produce their first novels, songs and films, they often draw inspiration from professionals they admire.

It is just the same in journalism. Find people whose work, or working methods, you admire and use what you can learn from them. There is no copyright on ideas and so lap up other reporter’s original thinking. It could be the way they start an intro on a news story, or an imaginative piece to camera on a TV news report, or the kinds of questions they ask at a press conference to get good answers.

It is good to have heroes and heroines and by that I mean professionals whose work you admire. As we see all too often with sporting heroes or celebrities, other aspects of their lives may sometimes be less than inspiring. That’s not what counts here though, because we are only interested in their professional work.

So, who do I recommend you try to emulate?

Here are two dozen journalists, or groups of journalists, whose work I think you can learn from.

1. Dith Pran, who died two years ago, was a photojournalist for the New York Times. He survived for four years of the brutal Khmer Rouge regime in which up to a third of his fellow countrymen perished. Dith Pran is typical of so many unsung heroes in journalism, the local “interpreter” or “fixer” used by foreign correspondents to help them cover the story for a western news organisation. In his case it was Sydney Schanberg of the New York Times. Schanberg’s book about Dith Pran, and the ordeal he suffered after the the American reporter was forced to abandon Cambodia, formed the basis for the 1984 film, The Killing Fields. The actor who played Dith Pran won an Oscar.

2. Burma VJ is also a film about journalists recording the plight of their fellow countrymen and it is also shortlisted for an Oscar, but in 2010 in the Best documentary category. The VJs of the title are people, often Buddhist monks, who bravely used video cameras and the internet to try to draw attention to a brutal crackdown in their country.

3. Terry Lloyd is a reporter I worked with at ITN. In 1988 he broke the story that Saddam Hussein had gassed the Kurds at Halabja. He died in March 2003 when the minibus he was travelling in was fired on by US forces near Basra. Terry was not embedded with any military unit. He preferred to report from a more impartial position. In October, 2006 a British coroner ruled that Terry had been “unlawfully killed”.  Terry was a brave and hugely experienced reporter who always regarded himself as a newshound rather than a TV news performer.

4. Frederic Nerac was Terry’s cameraman on that day. Seven years on, Frederic’s family can only presume that he died at the scene, because neither the US nor British governments have ever revealed what happened to him. Terry and Frederic’s colleague at ITN, Mark Austin, was once asked: “What makes a good TV reporter?” His answer was, “A good cameraman.” It’s a simple answer, but very true. Cameramen, camerawomen and photographers are often the unsung heroes, but it is so often their images that remain etched on our minds.

5. Robert Fisk is a veteran reporter who has often taken the brave step of showing the other side of the story and who has worked hard to champion objective reporting of the Middle East. His reports for the Independent have earned him many awards, but have also made him the object of fierce criticism from some quarters. Fisk has interviewed Osama Bin Laden three times.

6. Frank Gardner, the BBC’s Security Correspondent, was attacked and wounded by Al-Qaeda gunmen in Saudi Arabia in 2004. A brave television cameraman called Simon Cumbers died at his side. Frank Gardner returned to work ten months later in a wheelchair and has been working ever since despite his injuries.

7. Caroline Hawley was the BBC’s Baghdad Correspondent for three years from 2003-2006.  Caroline studied Arabic and Farsi at Oxford and spent a total of eight years reporting from the Middle East.

8. Orla Guerin is one of the BBC’s most senior foreign correspondents.  Currently based in Pakistan, she has covered the Middle East, Africa and conflicts in the Balkans.

9. Robert Peston has carved out a special niche for himself at the BBC with his insightful, and often exclusive reporting of developments in the Credit Crunch as its Business Editor. His book, Who Runs Britain? lifts the lid on the influence of high finance, venture capital and risky speculation on British society and he provides daily insights through his blog.

10. Stephanie Flanders is the BBC’s Economics Editor and also provides useful commentary through her blog, Stephanomics. She is the grand-daughter of Claud Cockburn, who covered the Spanish Civil War as a reporter in 1936. Like Peston before her, Stephanie Flanders read PPE at Balliol College, Oxford. She also studied at Harvard for two years.

11. Camilla Cavendish, another Oxford PPE and Harvard-educated journalist, writes for the Times. Her campaigning journalism over the rights of children in Family Courts has earned her several awards and plaudits including the 2008 Paul Foot Award and the Best Campaign Award for The Times at the British Press Awards last year.

12. Decca Aitkenhead of the Guardian won the best interviewer category at the same awards ceremony and you can read her pieces in the Guardian’s G2 section.

13. Lynn Barber is one of the finest interviewers British journalism has produced and you can buy several collections of her best pieces. An Education is her latest book. It’s an autobiographical account of coming of age in the 1960s and it’s been nominated for three Oscars this year, including one for Nick Hornby’s screenplay adaptation and another for Carey Mulligan, who plays Barber.

14. Dawn Porter has become a role model for many young TV journalists, with her explorations of risqué and personal subjects for BBC3, Channel 4 and Five. She is currently based in Hollywood, but you can follow her on Twitter to see what she is up to.

15. Louis Theroux is another broadcaster with an ability to get under the skin of his subjects. I always remember being in the newsroom at Sky and seeing him leave an East London police station with Neil and Christine Hamilton, who had suddenly found themselves at the centre of a media storm, accused – falsely, as it transpired – of crimes I couldn’t mention in a family blog. As the Hamiltons sped past the media scrum, Louis was there in the car with them and it was clear he had no intention of “making his excuses” and leaving.

16. Charlie Brooker has provided some biting, but insightful commentary on his Screenwipe, Gameswipe and Newswipe programmes. He won Column of the Year at last year’s British Press Awards for his writing in the Guardian.

17. Jamie Oliver is on my list, because I believe his School Dinners series for Channel 4 used television to lift the lid on an unpalatable underbelly of British life and also prompted Government reform. Jamie may not regard himself as a reporter, but I think he deserves to be counted among the more influential citizen journalists of our time.

18. Fern Britton also features in my list, and not because she’s married to celebrity chef Phil Vickery. Her interview with Tony Blair on Fern Britton Meets..in November 2009, produced the most candid account to date of the former Prime Minister’s views on the Iraq War.

19. The Daily Telegraph MPs’ Expenses Team has produced the best, most influential and long-running scoop in British journalism’s history and the story is not over yet. How they came by the information, how much they paid for it and how lucky they were to receive it, are matters for debate. But the painstaking way they pieced together the story, the way they created a daily drip-feed of new revelations, which dominated the agenda, and the ongoing implications for parliament, cannot be overlooked.

20. Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein showed even greater tenacity in pursuing a political scandal 35 years earlier when they refused to let the implications of a burglary at a Washington office block go away. Watch or read All The President’s Men and you will see what I mean.

21. Tina Brown is a British journalist who took New York by storm. After becoming editor-in-chief of Tatler at the age of 25, she went on to edit both Vanity Fair and The New Yorker. Her latest venture is the online newspaper, The Daily Beast.

22. Harold Evans is Tina Brown’s husband, but he is also regarded as one of the most influential Britain’s newspaper editors of the Twentieth Century. He was editor of The Sunday Times at the time it broke the thalidomide story and he has written several highly regarded books on his profession. The latest came out just a few months ago. It’s called My Paper Chase: True Stories of Vanished Times and it is an inspirational read.

23. Truman Capote remains a thought-provoking writer whose literary approach to a murder story In Cold Blood reminds us that the search for truth is not always best achieved by conventional journalism.

24. Graham Greene is another writer whose novels have provided insights which perhaps have more resonance than daily news reports. To understand the plight of Haiti, you can do a lot worse than read his 1966 novel, The Comedians, which was set there during the time of Papa Doc Duvalier.

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In this series of posts on the skills you need to be a good reporter, I have been concentrating on people skills. Some of these skills can be used to charm contacts or to persuade interviewees to talk, but a good reporter should also develop a habit of looking over her shoulder to see what “the competition” is up to.

Today’s top tip is taken from the appropriately named Chinese General, Sun Tzu, who back in the Fifth Century BC, was quoted as saying: “know your enemy.”

Tip #21 Know Your Enemy

Have you heard the one about two men from London, a donkey and a sack of pesetas?

Well, if not, pay attention, because it is a story for journalists about living on your wits and going the extra mile. And the moral of the story is: never give up and never underestimate your enemy.

It all started one Pancake Day in a sleepy Spanish village called Villanueva de la Vera. The year was 1987 and the hero of the story was a little donkey called El Negro.

El Negro was picked by the villagers to be the star of an ancient Shrovetide festival. The bad news for El Negro was that the role involved being ritually beaten, abused and dragged through the streets and tormented in an alcohol-fuelled fiesta.

It didn’t look good for the little donkey, but then help arrived from the unlikely direction of London. Fleet Street reacted swiftly. With the stroke of a pen, the unfortunate ass was re-christened Blackie, Spanish phrase books and battered copies of For Whom The Bell Tolls were milked for Hispanic headlines, and the leader writers worked their cojones off, goading the great British public into a froth of righteous indignation.

Meanwhile, two rival desperadoes called Whittow and Mackay, were dispatched by the Sun and the Star. The race was on. Fleet Street was hell-bent on vengeance, mercy and a piece of the ass.

The Spanish villagers didn’t know what was about to hit them.

Whittow of the Sun arrived first. Clutching a fistful of pesetas, he bought young Blackie for the equivalent of £250. Back in London, Sun editor Kelvin Mackenzie sensed victory.

Whittow filed his story and then, baulking at the thought of bedding down with his burrito, the intrepid Sun reporter paid a farmer a sackful of pesetas to turn the young donkey out to grass in one of his fields.

It was an error of judgement Hugh Whittow would live to regret.

For, hot on his heels, was Don Mackay. And Mackay, a gringo from the Daily Star, meant business.

Dawn broke with a rustle of bank notes, and before Whittow could say, “full English breakfast”, Mackay and Blackie had made a break for Blighty and the border and Kelvin was choking on his corn flakes.

The Daily Star headline, read GOTCHA! and the front page showed a picture of Blackie and the receipt they had been given by a Spanish farmer who can scarcely have believed his luck.

The Sun tried running spoiler stories alleging that it was cruel to remove Blackie from all his donkey friends in Spain, but the Star hit back wheeling out legendary animal experts such as Johnny Morris to say that the little donkey would be happy in Devon.

On the day Blackie arrived in Dover, the Sun arranged its own welcoming party featuring a female donkey called Coco, but the five year old filly was  snubbed. Once again the Star hit back, this time revealing that Coco was actually a he.

So, when you are a reporter, remember that pride can often come before a fall. Make sure you work out who your rivals are and make it your business to try and beat them on every story. Journalism is a competitive game and so it is a good idea to cultivate a friendly rivalry with colleagues in the same office, but also to make sure you do a better job than people working for rival organisations.

You are less likely now than you once were to have a direct rival in regional newspapers, but try to find someone you can aim to beat.

All journalists should take pride in their words and their craft, but the moments of real triumph you experience, when you punch the air in victory, are usually at another journalist’s expense. There is no honour among donkey rustlers.

So, what happened to the protagonists in this modern morality tale?

Blackie Star was to live for five happy years at The Donkey Sanctuary in Devon.  He died there in May 1993.

“He had a friend and companion, another donkey called Lola, and he was very happy here,” said Dawn Vincent, a spokeswoman for the sanctuary, which has since set up two burrito shelters in Spain.

The people of Villanueva are under pressure to keep donkeys out of their Fiesta and the sanctuary has launched an online petition on Facebook to stamp out animal cruelty at the Shrovetide event.

Don Mackay was hailed as a red-top hero, but was later to switch allegiances from the Star to the Daily Mirror.

Kelvin Mackenzie struck Whittow off his Christmas card list, but stayed on as Editor of the Sun until 1994. He currently writes a column for the newspaper and has also appeared on the TV series Grumpy Old Men.

Hugh Whittow left the Sun and was working on the news desk at the Star when the sad news of Blackie’s death was announced in 1993. As the story broke he was heard to remark, “Oh dash, I hope you don’t expect me to write his flipping obituary!”

Or words to that effect. He was later to become editor of the Sunday Star and Deputy Editor of the Daily Express.

And as for the farmer who got paid twice in one night? Well, he’s probably bouncing his grandchildren on his knee and telling them the one about the two men from London, the donkey and the sack of pesetas.

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In this series of posts on the qualities you need to be a successful reporter, I’ve been concentrating on your people skills. Today I’m concentrating on one very important person, and that is you. And I’m looking specifically at your mind set, or attitude to work.

Tip #20 Go The Extra Mile

If you are hungry for success and you are prepared to work hard, then there’s a good chance you will make it as a journalist.

However, please note this official Government health warning. As from August 2009, you are not supposed to work more than 48 hours a week. That’s according to the European Working Time Directive.

So, it’s good to know your boss can’t force you to work long hours.

Luckily, for ambitious young reporters, there’s a loophole in the law. No one can stop you working longer hours if that’s what you want to do.

Next time you meet a really successful person in any field, ask them if they managed to do it in 48 hours a week.

This may sound like a grim sermon on “work ethics”, but your job doesn’t have to be a grind if you have the right frame of mind.

You can make your journey to the top a much happier one if you remember twelve simple rules.

• Work is fun and work is play when you are a journalist.
• It’s not a “proper job”.
• The more bylines you get, the better you feel.
• If a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well.
• It’s not a 9 to 5 job. Great. Enjoy it. Who needs routine?
• The more you put into it, the more you will get out of it.
• Welcome stress, it shows you that you are alive.
• You only have one life, so make the most of every minute.
• Don’t moan. Develop a sense of humour instead.
• Be a good team player. Pull your weight and don’t pull “sickies”.
• Always look for ways to make your next story better than the last and better than anyone else’s story.
• If your career starts to feel more like an endurance race than a sprint, stick at it. Winners are always prepared to go the extra mile.

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I have to admit to feeling a little smug of late. As a journalist, I’ve spent my life coming up with ideas and then turning them into stories in newspapers or reports on the telly or the radio.

If you are an ‘ideas person’ like me, there’s always a warm glow of satisfaction when someone connects with your latest piece of inspiration. And in recent months, I actually think posts on this blog may have been inspiring people in high places.

Twice in recent times people seem to have taken my advice.

MPs’ Expenses And Millionaires

Last May I saw an episode of Secret Millionaire on the TV and come up with the sensational idea that we should have a reality show featuring MPs living in run down sink estates.

My blog post was entitled Secretive Millionaires.

So, imagine my surprise, to turn on the telly last night and see my idea brought to life in Towerblock of Commons on Channel 4.

Afghanistan

Back in November, in another post entitled The Cost Of War And The Price Of Peace, my cunning plan was to use Afghanistan’s opium revenues to fund payment schemes for impoverished Afghan farmers, who are being persuaded to fight for the Taliban, and to use the crop itself to make medicine.

So, what was Gordon Brown’s big plan at last week’s summit on Afghanistan? Well, you’ve guessed it. Except, that is, for the medicine bit. Perhaps they’re planning to deal with farmers first and pharmaceutical giants later.

Incidentally, if you missed last night’s Dispatches documentary Behind Enemy Lines on Channel 4, it is well worth tracking down online. As Nancy Banks Smith points out in today’s Guardian, the film shot in Northern Afghanistan by Najibullah Quraishi paints a very human portrait of an enemy we very rarely see. It also includes a great line from the intrepid journalist when he is challenged to join the fight himself. “My camera is my gun.”

Those two programmes aired on Channel 4 last night may have their critics. Some may feel it is inappropriate to reduce Members of Parliament to bit-part players in a reality television show, or that Behind Enemy Lines either gave the oxygen of publicity to the other side in the conflict or somehow belittled the efforts of Britain’s armed forces.

I would argue that in each case the film makers were doing what all good journalists should do and that is to encourage their readers and viewers to take another look at the way we live our lives and ask if there are alternatives or lessons to be learned. Stimulating and thought-provoking television.

In the meantime, I’ll let you know if I have any other bright ideas.

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In this series of articles I’m looking at some of the key skills every reporter needs to develop. In any stationery department you will see reporter’s notebooks on sale and despite all the technological innovations we’ve witnessed over the years, those ringbound pads are still among the most important tools of the job.

Tip #19 Make Notes

Hot gossip, hearsay and rumour may all be intriguing, but if you want to write stories that people will believe, you need to make accurate notes of the conversations you have with your sources.

As soon as you put pen to paper, or type words onto a screen, your story becomes more potent, powerful and potentially dangerous than any whispered snippet of information picked up on the grapevine.

The written word can be dangerous for the subject of the story and also for the writer. Publish and you may be damned, but also sued.

A carefully written, contemporaneous note allows you to demonstrate that you have an accurate version of what has been said and it might be produced as evidence for your defence in a court of law.

As a reporter, your job is to find out what is going on by talking to people. You write down what they have to say, not for your own benefit, but so that you can report their words to other people, your readers.

A reporter's best friends.

It may not feel easy or natural at first, but as you become more experienced, producing a notebook and pen, part way through a conversation, will become second nature. So too, will the ability to engage people in a meaningful discussion while making a note of what they are saying.

Sometimes you’ll feel it necessary, or appropriate, to ask your interviewee’s permission to reach for your pen and pad. At some point in the conversation you’ll say, “Really? That’s fascinating. Do you mind if I make a note of what you’re saying?”

It is often a good idea to explain why you are making notes and to reassure the interviewee that you want to make sure you get it right.

When you are new to reporting, it is also a good idea to buy for time when you are making those notes. Don’t be afraid to go back over what you have written, again impressing your source with your determination to write an accurate story.

Seeing your notebook, and your notes in shorthand, will often inspire confidence in an interviewee, who may well appreciate that as a reporter you have the power to sway opinion and get things done.

So, if you want to start behaving like a professional reporter, start carrying a notebook wherever you go.

NB(nota bene…that’s Latin for note well)

In the old days of Fleet Street, photographers sometimes dismissed reporters as “blunts”, short for blunt nibs.

And that’s a clue for another piece of advice. Never go anywhere without a pen, and one that works.

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In this series of articles on reporting skills I am dealing with some of the important inter-personal skills you need to develop to be a good reporter. Today my tip is to find ways to Earn Your Contacts’ trust.

Tip #18 Earn Your Contacts' Trust

There are few phrases in the English language that are likely to inspire less confidence than, “Trust me, I’m a journalist”.

But, trust me, at some point or other you are going to have to ask your informants to take a calculated risk and confide in you.

The relationship between journalists and their sources is often a complicated one and particularly when those contacts are professional spin doctors, or media-savvy people in public life.

As a reporter you have to have your wits about you. Dealing with contacts can be like a game of cat and mouse and you have to know whether you are playing the cat or the mouse in any given situation.

So, you might have a contact who feeds you several small snippets of information to keep your attention away from the bigger story involving her organisation. Spin doctors notoriously pick news days dominated by big stories, to “bury” unpalatable announcements.

Similarly, it may be in a company’s best commercial interests to issue a “no comment” statement or to say, “we can neither confirm nor deny that we have received a buy-out offer at this stage”. This keeps interest in the story alive and rumour can fuel financial speculation and so have an influence on the price of  the company’s shares.  A foreign exchange dealer in the City once confided to me that his motto was, “buy on the rumour, sell on the news”.

However, a canny journalist will also play this game to her advantage. One way to keep one step ahead of the rest of the pack is to demonstrate that your source can rely on you. So, if you are ever told something, no matter how small, in confidence by a source, you have to make a calculation about what is more important, your source or the story. You don’t have to enter into a conspiracy of silence, but by demonstrating discretion and tact over some issues you can gradually build up a rapport and if you have read the person and the situation properly, you may become a favoured conduit for more important stories and snippets of information.

If you watch, or read, All The President’s Men, you will see that the story, which gradually gained momentum, ultimately leading to President Nixon’s impeachment, was fed by tip-offs from an anonymous source nicknamed ‘Deep Throat’. That contact put himself at considerable risk to pass on the information, but why did he choose Bob Woodward, a relatively junior general reporter on the Washington Post, rather than one of the paper’s top political correspondents?

The answer is that Woodward was not a reporter straight out of college. He had spent five years working as an officer in the US Navy, and on the staff at the White House, before turning to journalism. At the White House, Woodward met a man who would be in charge of the day-to-day running of the FBI three years later when the Watergate case was being investigated.  That man’s identity remained secret until 2005, when Deep Throat was finally identified as W.Mark Felt.  Felt died last year, aged 95, and speculation about his motives for disclosing the information will no doubt continue for many years. However, it seems likely that Felt decided to give Bob Woodward the information because he believed that the former White House aide was someone who understood the rules of the game, someone who would protect his identity and someone he could trust.

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