Paul Foot 2008: The alternative highlights of the night

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Journalism.co.uk was very happy to make the acquaintance of Jim Oldfield, one of the runner-ups in the Paul Foot Award, last night. He is the editor of seven community newsletters in South Yorkshire.

He was nominated for the Rossington Community Newsletter, South Yorkshire Newspapers, for coverage of opposition to the proposed construction of an ‘eco-town’ in Rossington.

Oldfield very keen to emphasise the talents and commitment of his reporting team (which consists of one full-time and two part-time journalists), who were also there last night.

After hearing about the Newsletter’s various scoops over a canape or two (J.co.uk now has his ‘The Killer in My Cab’ splash decorating its desk), we got this pic:

Meanwhile, the prize for the biggest cheer of the night definitely went to another runner-up’s supporters: those rooting for the Observer’s Dan McDougall (he is pictured with host Ian Hislop, below). McDougall was nominated for his investigation of child labour in South Asia.

UPDATE (May 2009) – details of the 2008 Paul Foot award winners – Camilla Cavendish and Richard Brooks – can be found at this link

4 thoughts on “Paul Foot 2008: The alternative highlights of the night”

  1. Peter Tromp

    Hi Judy,

    When reading your incomplete report of this event, one thing is for sure, you will never win the Paul Foot award yourself dear.

    In case you haven’t noticed “when being there”: there were actually two winners of the award in 2008 and you completely missed out on co-winner Camilla Cavendish of The Times – for an excellent series of pieces on the secret culture of the family courts and a campaign against the miscarriages of justice carried out under the Children’s Act 1989 in these secret courts.

    Were you actually there or did you get your information from Twitter? But hey you were on Twitter, quite an accomplishment for a journalist with your reporting qualities probably.

    As you will probably be well aware of with your journalism qualities dear, live is all about appearances. So you will probably have often exercised in deleting critical reactions like mine on your writing,

    Therefore wishing you all the best in your sort of “journalism”,

    Regards,
    Peter

  2. Laura Oliver

    Hi Peter,

    Thanks for leaving a comment. We appreciate – and publish – feedback both positive and negative.

    Judith was at the awards in person, I can vouch for that as I was with her.

    We reported on the joint winners in a separate news story – http://www.journalism.co.uk/2/articles/532713.php – as you can see, both winners are mentioned in the headline. We also featured them in a separate blog post – http://blogs.journalism.co.uk/editors/tag/richard-brooks/

    This blog post was meant to be an alternative view on the night – though it should perhaps have included a link to the winners’ piece. Something I’ll add now under a clearly marked update.

    Best,

    Laura

  3. Peter Tromp

    Hello Laura,

    Thanks for answering me so quickly and I do apologise to both Judith and you for having drawn the wrong conclusions in my first entry to soon myself.

    I was looking for information on Camilla Cavendish of The Times winning the award and jumped to conclusions to soon when I didn’t find any. In that you are quite right that my premature conclusion did result from the lack of reference to the main articles reporting on the winners that I was actually looking for.

    Best,
    Peter

  4. Judith Townend Post author

    Hi Peter, just to add an additional comment: we try to report around events, hence this piece with additional information from the night – the background on a couple of the runners-up, in this case. However, your comment highlights that pieces can be found via search and out of context. We do usually strive to add in all relevant links to other parts of the site, so thanks for flagging this up.

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