Our investigation into this story began when a recently-released prisoner Joe Mallia called us and said his cellmate, Dr Edward Erin, had asked him to kill his ex-mistress and their baby.

Erin was locked up for six years in 2009, when he was found to have drugged his former girlfriend to try and force a miscarriage. Erin had also asked Mallia, who he'd been locked up with in Belmarsh, to send a text message from her phone, taking back her evidence.

Because of his criminal past, Mallia didn't want to go straight to the police because he didn't think they'd believe him with no solid evidence. He showed me a couple of letters that Erin sent him in prison. It may not have been enough evidence for the police but I got a hunch that this story was worth pursuing.

He did not try to hide his criminal past from me and I believed he was telling the truth. He explained what Erin was trying to use him for and manipulate him into doing and I felt it was worth pursuing even though it was clear at an early stage this would be extremely complex thing to do.

He explained to me that Erin was a very clever man and that he would only talk openly face-to-face – not on the phone, not in a letter. He said he could get a visiting order to see Erin who was by this time in Parkhurst prison, and we arranged for the meeting to be recorded. Obviously filming in a prison is not something you'd take on lightly and we had extensive discussions at the newspaper.

We felt that this was a clear case of public interest because, if what Mallia was telling us was true, a very serious offence was going to be committed. The police and the courts have now backed us on that.

So I equipped him with a camera and drove him down to Parkhurst prison. He was able to record the conversation and returned the device to me. It was clear that Erin was planning to get revenge on his ex-mistress.

We made the decision to go to the police before publishing because we were concerned that his ex-mistress may be in danger when Erin realised Mallia was not prepared to carry out the task. Erin had made it clear that he had someone else ready to carry out the job, so clearly she needed to be warned and possibly be protected by the police.

I made it clear to him from the word go that, if we proceeded, I would expect him to fully cooperate with the police. We both gave evidence at Portsmouth Crown Court and Erin was found guilty. He gets sentenced next month.

I'm immensely proud of this, and other, investigations which are possible at the Sun. I've been here for 17 years and it was the only newspaper I ever wanted to work for because of its willingness to invest in investigative journalism like this.

This article first appeared in Press Gazette Journalism Weekly.

In June 2010, Lillian Groves was playing outside her home when her ball rolled out into the street.

The 14-year-old, from New Addington, Croydon, looked for traffic before she went to collect it but was hit by a car and suffered catastrophic injuries.

She died in hospital later that night at roughly the same time that John Page, the speeding driver who hit her, admitted smoking cannabis before getting behind the wheel.

Yet the schoolgirl's family only learned a cannabis joint had been in his car on the day he was sentenced.

Police in the UK currently lack an equivalent drug-testing device to the breathalyser, meaning Page did not undergo a blood test until nine hours after the crash.

That was far too late for officers to prove – as required by law – the drug had caused impairment.

I first met Lillian's family on the morning of her death – handing her grandmother a note at their doorstep, before abiding by their request to be allowed time.

A few days later I was invited back to their home where her parents, Gary and Natasha, described the agony they felt at the loss of their "little princess".

We remained in regular contact. When I interviewed them after Page received an eight-month sentence (he was released within weeks), their despair had turned to anger and frustration.

That week's article ran with their concerns and the following Monday I suggested to my editor the paper should launch a campaign calling for the Government to change the law.

It was an ambitious goal, but he required no convincing. Our news editor suggested a name – Lillian's Law.

When I called the family, they were sold straight away. The launch article ran with the headline: 'Sign our petition and help catch drivers who take drugs".

And people did, in their thousands.

Croydon Central MP Gavin Barwell was the first politician to back the campaign, followed by Mayor of London Boris Johnson.

I contacted road safety charities, got the backing of international drugs-testing companies, and wrote about the out-of-date balance-and coordination tests currently available to police.

In October 2011, Barwell raised the campaign at Prime Minister's Questions, prompting our first big breakthrough – an invitation to meet David Cameron at Number 10. It led to an exclusive story for us when he promised to revise the law.

By then, the campaign had become bigger than us - the family were interviewed by every newspaper and TV channel.

Following our meeting with Cameron, the Department for Transport announced the creation of a panel of experts to explore a new law.

Then in January, beyond all our expectations, Cameron hinted the legislation could be included in the next Queen's Speech.

And last month it was. The Crime and Courts Bill will make it an automatic offence to drive under the influence of drugs if it becomes an Act.

The Advertiser gave Lillian's family a platform, but it was their determination which did it. It feels brilliant to be part of that.

This article first appeared in Press Gazette - Journalism Weekly. Click here to register for your free copy

John Gibson, who has been working at the Newcastle Evening Chronicle since 1966, last month won the Daily/Sunday Sports Journalist of the Year award at the Regional Press Awards. Here, ‘Gibbo', lets Press Gazette in on the secret of his success and his tips for would-be sports reporters...Interviewing. A crucial part of the job is interviewing. The secret of a good interview is to make the person you are interviewing feel relaxed. If you make it a chat rather than an interrogation, people are likely to tell you a lot more. It's also important to build trust with the person, both within the interview and long-term, if it's someone you're likely to deal with regularly.

The other big thing is to do your research. So many people don't put the research in but I think it is very important. If you're interviewing a famous person, as is likely to be the case in sports journalism, it will be really appreciated if you know something in-depth about them. It's also a good idea to come up with some original questions.

Often a professional footballer will face the same questions over and over again but if you get their attention with a question they haven't been asked before, they'll be more interested in talking to you.

Writing ability. You need to be able to write both a straight news story against the clock for edition and a feature, which is totally different.

You get the advantage of time with a feature. You can go back after you've written a long feature and give it a polish before you submit and I think that's something you've got to do.

The other thing I would say is yes, you've got to catch the attention of the reader immediately but that doesn't mean the big punchline has to be in the first paragraph. Don't go for the obvious ‘Joe Bloggs says we're going to win the FA Cup because we're the best team'– yawn, yawn, yawn.

Give it a little bit more ebb and flow and make some quirky points. Especially if you're writing a lengthy feature, I think you've got to get light and shade into it.

Retain your passion. The real secret is to retain your love of journalism, because I think if you actually fully enjoy what you're doing, it shines through to the people you're talking to and to the people who are actually reading your work. For me it's like football or rugby, or whatever. You just happen to get paid for doing your hobby.

Writing, talking to people, having the privilege of sitting in the best seat in the ground at a football match and actually getting paid for your opinion on how it went – how much more privileged can you get than that? Don't become cynical through time. Retain your joy. You've got to show that enthusiasm to the person you're interviewing and to the reader.

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Since Gerard Kelly became editor of the Times Educational Supplement in 2008, tes.co.uk has won the Professional Publishers Association (PPA) award for Digital Product of the Year three years in a row. And this month the print edition, which last year switched from newspaper to magazine format, won the PPA's business magazine of the year award. Here, Kelly explains some of the secrets behind the title's success.

Switching to magazine format. Before last year, we were an old- fashioned weekly newspaper, but there aren't many specialist weekly titles around anymore just based solely on newsprint, and we decided to change. Our desire was to be a little more professional and appeal to a more professional audience. Magazines allow you to do that in a way that newspapers can't. They're also far more durable. In schools, they hang around in staff rooms and are read again and again by lots of people. The website. We are pretty unique because we manage to get the web and magazine to complement each other well. To tell the truth, the biggest change has been getting the online and offline strategies right. You have to appeal to different audiences in different ways and over different platforms, and I think Ann Mroz, our online editor, has done very well. It's not just what's in print that's important – our website is key to our success. It basically takes the community, forums, resources and jobs and puts editorial context around them, rather than just trying to replicate what we do in print. I think that's very important. Also, the sheer scale of the website – it has two million members across 197 different countries – makes it unique. I don't deny that there's still a lot more we can do, for example, we're looking increasingly at tablets and what we should do and how we should package it.

Follow the reader. I think it's very important that we follow the reader, rather than lead them. Too often, journalists are really bad at thinking they know what their readers want without listening too closely to what they're telling them. We do proper research. You have to be close to your readers and know what they want. The great thing about our site is it's mainly user-generated. We provide expert advice and we nudge and suggest but actually it's user-generated. They are telling us what they want and we are just facilitating.

Know your audience. Our audience is global now and that gives us opportunities that might not be open to others. We have members in North Korea, Australia and in the Vatican. Trying to create content for them is a challenge but we can do it because you have common denominators. The fact that you are English speaking is an advantage when it comes to a vast section of the globe.

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Fancy plying your trade in the US of A? It is possible with careful planning and a bit of luck, freelancer Julie Moult writes from Los Angeles.

I'd had itchy feet for some time before the grey London day in October 2009 when I boarded a Los Angeles-bound plane, having never been to California before.

After nine exhilarating Fleet Street years, first as a news reporter at The Sun and later at the Daily Mail, I longed for a change of scenery – even though the thought of freelancing gave me sleepless nights.

If you too are harbouring a dream of crossing the Atlantic with pen and notepad in hand, take note – it hasn't all been plain sailing. But three years on, I can say with certainty, it has been worth the effort.

Firstly, you need an I visa to allow you to work in America. If you haven't already got one in your passport, check out the US Embassy website and see if you qualify. Don't think you'll be filing to the New York Times or People Magazine however – working for a US company could see you booted out of the country.

Next, pick your location. The major metropolitan areas see the most action but are also where you have the most competition. NY, LA and Miami are all well covered. But less so Chicago, Seattle and Dallas. Keep in mind the time difference. If you get to your desk at 7am in LA, it is already 3pm in London and most news editors will use someone on the East Coast who can get going that much earlier on a breaking news story.

So if you choose the West Coast, be prepared to generate your own work and widen your expertise.

I had been a news reporter my entire career, but this week I won an award for a showbiz feature I wrote for the women's magazine Fabulous.

Hopefully you've saved some money. Have at least £15,000 for start-up costs and to see you through the first few months.

Opening a bank account here is easy and necessary. Getting a mobile phone, a car lease and cable TV may prove harder when you've just landed in the country with no financial history – so bring a copy of anything that proves you are solvent.

Look into health insurance before you touch down. You'll quickly get misty-eyed about the NHS when you see how things work over here. Factor in £120 a month for a policy for the basics.

Contact the US correspondents and introduce yourself prior to arriving. Make sure all your colleagues and former colleagues in the UK know your plans.

The work they give you will be crucial as you get a foothold in your new patch. Finding a good British photographer made the world of difference to me. Step forward John Chapple who with 15 years experience in the States, knew everything I didn't. Set your fee in line with your competitors.

Expect to earn $400 a day. Undercutting may make you popular with news desks but it won't with your fellow hacks. And finally, don't be over-reliant on a small number of outlets. Last year when the News of the World closed suddenly, a lot of us had a gaping hole to fill. It was a wake-up call.

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Beth Neil (@bethneil), celebrity editor at Fabulous magazine, was awarded interviewer of the year at the Society of British Press Awards earlier this year. Here, Beth shares the secrets to the perfect celebrity interview.

Putting in the groundwork The key to any good interview is developing a rapport with your subject. But before I even sit down with a celebrity, I put in a lot of groundwork and make sure I've done my research.

Before every interview I trawl through cuts, print them off and read them thoroughly, making notes on anything that I think is interesting or important. I even check names and ages of the subject's siblings and what they do for a living.

Setting the mood It's important that the interview conditions are right, relaxed and that you can sit down one-to-one without any distractions. That's why it's always important to think about the venue and timing before an interview.

This isn't always possible but I always push hard for a decent chunk of time with the celebrity and I never do interviews over the phone. You need to be face-to-face with someone to develop that rapport and get the best from the subject.

Part of my job also involves setting up the interviews and I always go along to any photoshoots and prefer to do interviews after the pictures have been taken – when the pressure of having to pose for photos is out of the way.

It also means there's no photographer burning holes in the back of your head wanting to get on with the photos. By that point, thing are often a lot more calm and relaxed and I've already had chance to develop a rapport with the subject.

Taking an interest It always helps when a celebrity is open and gives you lots of great lines. Tulisa, for example, was an absolute dream to interview. She didn't have a PR sitting with her, she was very forthcoming and she didn't shirk any questions, so it was great to write up.

But although not everyone can be the most fascinating subject in the world, I think a good interviewer will always find something interesting about whoever they're interviewing. Sometimes you have to accept that you're not always going to get a great line and this can be challenging if you're planning to put an interview over four or five pages. So you have to think more about your questions and find an interesting angle.

Timing is everything I don't particularly relish asking a subject difficult, personal questions but sometimes it's got to be done. As long as they're asked in the right way and at an appropriate point in the conversation (not as the opening gambit!), then most people will give something back.

When I know I've got some tricky question to ask, they'll be in the back of my mind but I think it's about judging when the right time presents itself. And when it pays off, it can give you a great story, such as when Sarah Harding confessed during an interview for the first time to having cosmetic surgery.

Be observant I love all the colour and background you get in interviews: I think the little asides and the details help build up a picture of the subject. So I always make notes on these and weave them into the copy.

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We started this investigation when Mark Williams-Thomas approached us. He's been a criminologist and child protection expert for 20 years and used to be a police detective, so he's got a considerable amount of experience in this.

He came to us with concerns about paedophiles operating on Twitter, having previously done considerable work with Facebook. The difference between Facebook and Twitter is that Facebook actively monitors profiles, so they can identify people who they believe are sex offenders and pass them over to the police.

Twitter only close down an offending account, and do not monitor or look into it – so if you close down a profile, the person can just open up a new one.

As the reporter on the story, I was working with Mark. He set up a fake profile, which I had access to as well, and started doing key-word searches to find these individuals. Some of them had open, unprotected profiles so you could just watch them, while others were protected but Mark was accepted to ‘follow' them.

My role was to record all the conversations we could see, and monitor direct messages he was receiving under the fake profile. I collated the information and worked out who they were and where they lived.

It got to a stage, just a few days into the investigation, where we became concerned by what we were seeing and we took the decision to go to the police. As soon as we became concerned we didn't sit on the information, we called the police. We had a very important responsibility not to sit on any genuine information.

It crossed the line of being suspicious to being very concerning. When it got to that stage we immediately called the police and started working with the [Met's] paedophile unit, passing over everything we had. For the next seven days we agreed to pass the information on and they took charge and made the arrests.

We've now done a follow-up and started a campaign to get Twitter to clean up its act – we exposed it and now we're saying it needs to be tackled. Our concern is Twitter has 500 million users and a large proportion of those are children.

The disturbing feature of it is how easily paedophiles find each other and how easily we found them. We're still working with Mark and we've had a lot of support. It's going to be discussed at the meeting of the UK Council for Child Internet Safety in October, so it is gathering momentum and we plan to carry on lobbying Twitter.

We are the first newspaper to look into this situation. Before I had witnessed what these people were doing, I didn't believe it could be so widespread. But, looking back now, it seems hardly surprising because paedophiles are always looking for new platforms. Twitter is the latest thing.

I've covered a lot as a reporter, but this was the most shocking story I've covered in terms of sex offenders, because it's so wide-spread. It's like an underbelly to Twitter, a parallel road, and these individuals are highly dangerous. That's why the Sunday Mirror is keen to keep this campaign going. Facebook has taken a lead and now Twitter needs to follow.

Twenty-eight-year-old Archie Bland’s recent promotion to deputy editor of The Independent, makes him the youngest to hold this role in the paper’s history. The Indy claims he is also the youngest deputy editor working in nationals today. The son of former chairman of the BBC’s board of governors, Sir Christopher Bland. He was named Guardian Student Columnist of the Year in 2005 and received the Fulbright Alistair Cooke Award in Journalism for 2006-7 which enabled him to study at Columbia University Graduate School in Journalism. Here, Archie reflects on his rapid climb to the top and his  impressions of being a young senior in the business

Archie Bland’s tips

I did a lot of journalism at university. I edited the student paper and after that I took a gap year and did work experience, went travelling and got a Fulbright scholarship for Columbia University’s year-long course in journalism which was great.

It was quite different from City University or other London courses and was probably less useful for getting a job because the contacts weren’t in the right place. I then worked as an editorial assistant to a journalist, but I probably should have been getting shifts in papers as well.

After applying for tons and tons of jobs, I got a position as a graphics researcher at The Independent on Sunday.

Once you are in the building, it is 10 thousand times easier to get a job, once they know who you are and can trust you.

I moved onto the comments desk at The Independent, then became foreign editor, then Saturday editor and now deputy editor.

I think The Indy is somewhere where lots of young people are doing interesting jobs.

It is a paper where they are willing to recognise the right fit for a person, whatever their age. There are lots of people at the paper encouraged to pitch in if they’re young. You want to represent everyone in your newsroom – all the different voices in conversation who might be buying the paper. I have done quite a lot of features. I’ve never had a reporting job so I’ve never got a fantastic scoop, but I really enjoyed writing on the Arab Spring last year – that stands out the most.

I am one of two deputy editors, and I am very much the junior.

My remit will be across the whole paper and diving in whenever I think things need work. The paper is a very unhierarchical place. An editorial type job is to get the best out of people who know far more than you do.

It is just about refining. I will be looking at the day-to-day paper and crafting it, but also making decisions, working on longer-term, big-ticket projects. At the moment, I am working on Saturday’s relaunch and the new arts magazine part of it.

We are also redoing the travel section and adding new writers. I haven’t got a silver bullet to solve circulation. We are going to be bolstering the paper and, with a price rise next week, we are going to match it with content.

For aspiring journalists, I think the route you take in depends massively on what you want to do

If you want to work on a paper, go there and just keep pitching all the time. Journalism school is more and more a good idea, but it is not essential.   Especially for those first jobs and in terms of work experience, I would say, ‘Don’t be an idiot!’ For example, if your deadline is at three o’clock, make sure that you don’t file your copy at four o’clock, and generally be really reliable.

The sports and news desks of The Indy and the Evening Standard have been put together and are working well.

Chris Blackhurst is now editorial director of the two papers and there are things that would make sense to put together, but we are always properly conscious that they are two papers doing distinct things. It is a process that’s continually ongoing.

Keywords, keywords, keywords. Everyone should by now know the importance of keywords and the potential increase in traffic they can bring to a website, but how much is enough and how much is just too much? How can you stop your online content looking like a knocked over bucket of keywords, yet still harness the power of a Google search?

Well, the most important thing a content writer must know is that ultimately, good SEO is about making a site as user friendly and engaging for a reader as possible. This is what the Google algorithm is after and what it is built for. Increasingly we are seeing Google becoming savvier to so called “black-hat” SEO techniques such as keyword stuffing,, where content is jammed full to bursting with keywords. Relevant or not, Google hates too many keywords.

Journalists need to be employing Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) best practices and ‘white hat’ SEO techniques into their articles in order to maintain their audience figures. That does not mean you need to bow down at the feet of Google and follow their rules to the detriment of your writing; instead you should make the SEO work for you and your readers by making it look natural.

Headlines represent a great SEO hook, by using the online headline as a title tag, which is scanned by the Google spider to determine how relevant your content is to a particular search. In order to harness this SEO potential, online content does need to contain more keywords or searchable phrases then a traditional print headline. You need to think about what users might type in to Google when searching for more information related to the story you are writing. 

The Google algorithm is also a journalist’s friend; Google’s recent updates focus on freshness and relevance to trending topics; what news is all about. Always be on the look out for trending issues and research phrases that are important to the story and article. While Twitter may be of use to source some more information, it can also be used to pick up these phrases that are underpinning comment and opinion.

Another area that you should focus your keyword eye on is the introduction to an article; more specifically, the first 150 words or so. It is here that you should be placing relevant and natural looking keywords. In online terms we call this area ‘above the fold’, which means that the text is present without the user having to scroll down a page.  It is the place where the Google spider places more of its emphasis and if content rich, while not stuffed full of keywords, Google will deem it to be relevant and of good quality, and will reward you with a higher ranking in searches.

• Walsh: 'A lot of people didn’t think it was appropriate to ask what were very necessary questions.'

• Sports reporters became 'fans with typewriters'

• 'I was the romantic who believed you could get to the truth'

• BBC's Armstrong coverage was 'particularly poor'

David Walsh’s last face-to-face meeting with disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong tells you all you need to know about the Irishman’s uncompromising style.

In April 2001 he boarded a flight to Nantes to meet Armstrong at a hotel near Bordeaux in the south of France.

Two years earlier, he had provoked the fury of Armstrong and his army of supporters in an article that appeared in The Sunday Times on the day he won the first of his seven Tour de France titles.

 “This afternoon I will be keeping my arms by my side,” Walsh wrote, “because I’m not sure this is something we should be applauding.”

Walsh was not alone in his suspicions, but was almost alone in voicing them.

In the spring of 2001, after two years of investigations into Armstrong, he received a call from one of his representatives inviting him for an interview.

“He rang me because he knew I was asking a lot of questions and he thought that if I come along, and he’s really nice to me, and he gives me a one-on-one interview, I’ll be as happy as every other journalist and I’ll become his friend,” Walsh says.  

“I didn’t feel any desire to be his friend because I had a sense of what he was like, and I felt there were lots of questions that needed answering.”

He recalls his first words to Armstrong when he arrived at the hotel: “I don’t believe you’re clean, but this is why I’m here, because I have questions.

“But the only questions I want to ask you are about doping. I won’t be asking you one question about cycling outside of the context of doping.”

Unsurprisingly, Walsh says the introduction left Armstrong “quite deflated”.

Contacts within the team later told him that Armstrong was “seething with anger” after the interview. “That’s obviously the last one-on-one I ever got,” jokes Walsh.

For many, 2012 was the year in which Walsh’s relentless pursuit of Armstrong over the last 13 years was finally vindicated, which explains why Press Gazette readers voted him number two in our Top 50 Sports Journalists.

On 24 August the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) announced it was stripping Armstrong of his seven Tour De France titles and handed him a lifetime ban from the sport.
Armstrong opted not to contest USADA’s doping charges saying he was tired of fighting the allegations, which he continues to deny despite the mass of evidence against him.

Decision time

Walsh began working on the story shortly after moving to England in 1998. He began his career as a cub reporter on the Leitrim Observer, where he worked his way up to become editor at 25.

Keen to pursue a career as a sports writer, he left the paper to join the now defunct Dublin-based daily the Irish Press. His involvement in cycling began in 1984 when he took a year out to cover the sport in Paris, returning to the Sunday Press a year later.

In 1987 he left the paper to work for the Sunday Tribune before moving onto the rival Sunday Independent four years later.

Walsh joined The Sunday Times in Ireland in 1996 and two years later was asked by the paper’s sports editor, Alex Butler, to join the team in London.   

Reflecting on the 1999 Tour, Walsh tells Press Gazette: “Cycling had just come out of maybe its worst year for doping – the 1998 Tour was shown up by French police to be a drug-riddled circus.

“Then Armstrong came along and you had to make a decision: Was this part of the rejuvenation of cycling or was this a continuation of the doping culture?”

What first piqued Walsh’s suspicion was Armstrong’s reaction to an article by a young cyclist named Christophe Bassons, in which the Frenchman claimed the top riders were still doping.

“Armstrong bullied him and hounded him out of the race,” says Walsh. “My feeling at that moment was that a clean rider wouldn’t have done that. It was pretty obvious to me that Armstrong was doping – not from
any evidence I had but from the way he behaved.

“I think if anybody had been applying cold logic at the time, they would have come to the same conclusion.”

Necessary questions

Walsh believes that the reason why people – many of them journalists – did not apply that logic was the emotive background behind Armstrong’s first Tour success.

In 1996 he was diagnosed with testicular cancer, with the tumour later spreading to his brain and lungs. His original prognosis was poor, but he was declared cancer free a year later after brain and testicular surgery and extensive chemotherapy.

“It felt like the cancer was a big factor from day one,” says Walsh. “A lot of people didn’t think it was appropriate to ask what were very necessary questions.

“I think part of the reason they didn’t want to ask those questions was because the guy had come back from cancer. For me, that was irrelevant. I just didn’t think that should stop us from asking questions.  

“The thing is that in sport nowadays, the sponsors, the race organisers, the sportsmen themselves, they’re almost telling us how we should react to an event.

“But the only thing that’s still our own… the only thing they can’t take away from you is your emotional reaction to that event.

“My emotional reaction to Armstrong’s victory was that I didn’t feel I could rely on its validity or its integrity.”

When Walsh articulated his position in that 1999 Sunday Times article it created uproar. Walsh himself described the reaction as “vitriolic”.

One person emailed him saying: “Mr Walsh, you have the worst kind of cancer of all: You have cancer of the spirit.

“Everybody would say, ‘what evidence have you got?’. I would say, ‘well I don’t have enough evidence to ever prove to anyone that he’s guilty…I just feel that I have huge responsibility, a huge need, to go and ask a lot of questions’.”

Fans with typewriters

His colleagues on other papers were not so keen to ask those questions. Some still aren’t, says Walsh.  

“Initially, quite a number of them would have shared my scepticism during that Tour de France,” says Walsh, “but by the end of it, the Armstrong myth had taken off.

“This was one of the great comebacks in the history of sport and everybody wanted to believe it so badly, regardless of what doubts they would have had.”

It touches on a wider issue in the world of sports journalism – what Walsh describes as journalists as “fans with typewriters”.

“There was a time when it wasn’t cool to be a fan with a typewriter. When you went to a stadium you went as a journalist, and you didn’t express any partisanship for one team or another.

“You look at the BBC’s coverage of the Olympics, and it seems to me that the more it went on the more commentators didn’t try to hide the fact that they felt they were fans, not serious journalists working at a very serious event. In the cycling that happened to a degree.

“Because the Armstrong story was deemed to be so good, so remarkable, an inspiration to countless millions, who wants to rain on that parade? Who wants to be the one to say, ‘hold on, it may not be what it seems’. Journalists then begin acting like fans with typewriters.

“It was far better to write about the angel on wheels.”

Walsh was one of a just a handful of journalists who persevered with the story, alongside the likes of Sunday Times colleague and ex-pro cyclist Paul Kimmage, and the French journalist Pierre Ballester, with whom Walsh co-wrote the book ‘LA Confidential: Lance Armstrong’s Secrets’.

Publication of the book was a seminal moment in the Armstrong doping saga, and for Walsh the fallout sums up much of what is wrong with the UK’s draconian libel laws.

The book contained highly damaging allegations including those from Emma O’Reilly, the Irish masseuse who worked with Armstrong’s US Postal Team for five years.

Some of the allegations made in the book were repeated in an article Walsh wrote for The Sunday Times. Armstrong’s legal team quickly rolled into action, pursuing libel claims in the US, France and the UK.
In 2006 the defamation claims in the US and France were dropped, but in the UK The Sunday Times reached an out-of-court settlement understood to have cost publisher News International around £600,000.

‘So-called press freedom’

In London, Armstrong instructed the aggressive libel lawyers Schillings, which sent a letter to every UK paper and broadcaster warning them not to repeat the allegations.

Walsh believes that in the UK the prevailing view that Armstrong was a “cancer icon, not the head of one of the worst doping conspiracies we have ever seen”.

“Emma O’Reilly was one of the big sources for this. She’s a heroine in her own way, because she came out and told the truth at tremendous cost to herself.

“She said that all she ever wanted to do was tell the truth about her time in Lance Armstrong’s team. No vindictiveness, no vendetta. She just said: ‘Why should I lie if I’m asked a question?’ She was asked a question and she told the truth.”

When O’Reilly did interviews with magazines in America, according to Walsh, she was advised that while she had no problem in the US, because the story was being published online she could face legal action in Britain.

“Emma eventually got beaten down,” says Walsh. “She feels that if you want to tell the truth about an experience you had, why should the law say you can’t do that? That point really needs to get out there.

“We’re in a country where someone like Emma O’Reilly felt she couldn’t tell the truth. And if she had been allowed to tell the truth, Lance Armstrong might not have won the Tour De France seven times and the history of sport would be different and better.

“The riders who were screwed – the riders who weren’t dealing and had their careers ended prematurely – those guys would have all got a better deal. That’s a sadness that people don’t recognise.

‘The romantic who believed you could get to the truth’

While Walsh continued to publish books in the UK and France, the High Court ruling “killed the story in the UK”.

While The Sunday Times would continue to publish articles on Armstrong, the rest of the British media appeared to have been cowed by Armstrong’s legal machine.

“The pity was that we just couldn’t have gone from 2004 and really gone for it. We might not have waited this long for the story to come out if newspapers in the UK had been allowed to do their job properly.”

He describes the BBC as being “particularly poor” in its coverage.

“The BBC would not publish allegations even a year ago when other papers were,” says Walsh.

Returning to how some colleagues on rival titles behaved during this period, he recalls a story from 2004, when he was meant to travel with American, British and Australian journalists who he knew well.  

He was told they didn’t want him in the car because they thought it might anger Team Armstrong – and because “we need his quotes, we need his favour”.

“To me that was an act of cynicism, and in a way I was the romantic who believed you could get to the truth,” he says.

“People always used to say that I was the cynic. You might find this strange, but I’m the only one who isn’t cynical, because all the guys who had a sense that he was cheating but thought it was too much trouble to investigate it, that it would make their lives messy – to me they are the cynics.”

‘I didn’t run away from the story no matter what’

News International is now taking steps to  recover the costs it incurred in the 2004 case, but it has to join what could become a very long queue.  

“They don’t want to get into a five-year lawsuit to get £300,000 back, which costs you £1m. They know they’re entitled to it because Armstrong lied through his teeth.”

Asked what lessons young journalists can draw from the way he covered the Armstrong story Walsh says: “I’m not saying I’ve had a brilliant career or anything like that, but when I go out and meet people, the only thing that they will ever say is, ‘I admire the work you did with Armstrong’.

“Because I was bothered to ask questions about Armstrong all those years ago, and didn’t run away from the story no matter what, people think that was actually worthwhile.

“I know that when I’m on my deathbed and somebody asks: did you ever do anything as a journalist you were proud of, I would say only one thing: ‘Lance Armstrong’.”

This piece first appeared in Press Gazette - Journalism Quarterly. Details of how to subscribe (for less than  £20 a year) here.

David Hencke saw off competition from major news organisations to win Political Journalist of the Year at the British Journalism Awards for fledgling news website exaro. The judges described his revelations over widespread Whitehall tax avoidance as a “major scandal”.

Like many great stories, it started with a whistleblower.

“I was introduced to a senior civil servant who basically was very upset about what he could see – the culture changing around him. He had picked up a lot of stories suggesting that people being appointed to jobs across Whitehall were basically avoiding tax by either having their own personal company or being employed for a management company.

“During the many meetings that took place in different pubs he actually honed on one example that he had heard at the Student Loans Company. And basically said there seemed to be definite evidence that the head had actually got a job and wasn’t paying any tax directly.

“And he thought the best way to get this was to put a very carefully honed question to the loans company and to the business department at the same time – using a FoI request. He helped me draft it so it was very precise and they couldn’t get out of it.”

Complicated scheme

“It was very complicated – you couldn’t imagine a more complicated scheme.”

Hencke explains that one senior civil servant had his own company – with a home address in the middle of the Thames – and had a flat in Glasgow, as well as all rail and air expenses, paid for him.

“All this had been very craftily arranged. Because he didn’t appear to touch the money – it went to his company. But as a result, neither the Student Loans Company nor he paid any tax.”

In addition the FoI request provided a variety of other interesting insights into the inner workings of the SLC and Whitehall.

Because Exaro broke the story with Newsnight the programme had to give notice to chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander.

“So we had to hold back and then coordinate both the programme and the story. But we actually got something brilliant out of it because obviously Alexander was terrified about it and thought, ‘what on earth I could do, I’ve been completely caught red-handed’, I can’t say these documents, it’s not like a leak where they could say it was wrong, these were actual documents supplied by the government on what had happened and he decided in reacting to this story to basically launch an inquiry.

“He announced this huge inquiry to find out what was going on. And then another source about a month or so later had discovered there were thousands of these people, but they circulated the minister their plan for their clampdown which was basically a letter between Alexander and George Osborne admitting it was huge and saying ‘we’re going to really clamp down’.

“It then started a huge check across Whitehall. And at the time I did the story the original civil servant suspected it might be widespread but couldn’t prove it. But the extraordinary thing was ministers had not noticed this going on. That’s what I found amazing – that the civil servants could create this situation and no one would know.

“So it was an amazing thing and I was really pleased because it was a major tax avoidance scam that was changed.”

A blogger who secured more than £6,000 in funding from donors on the internet to live-tweet the hacking trial is planning a book on the affair.

Peter Jukes has already written a book about the background to the trial and hopes to have a second edition out during the summer.

He said he had no intention of covering the entire trial when he applied for a press ticket back in August on behalf of the Daily Beast. Now though, he is committed until Christmas and maybe beyond.

He said: "I started off as a blogger but I’ve had a fairly eclectic career. I have always had an interest in journalism. I have written for television and radio plays.

“At the time of the first US presidential election I started blogging, but in truth I’ve been around the media and journalists for more than twenty years. I’ve been following these events closely for a while and I wrote a book on the background of the trial, The Fall of the House of Murdoch. Hopefully next summer I will be able to get a second edition out by next summer.”

Jukes said: “I thought initially that I would have only been able to live tweet the opening argument and that would be the end of it. I told some people that I couldn’t afford to keep operating in Central London every day.  After a couple of days a few people said to me that I should crowd sourcesome money to stay going until Christmas.

“I thought to start off with that this was like begging. Then someone sent me £20 by Paypal to my email address. I didn’t even know you could do that. It snowballed from there."

Jukes established a homepage on the indiegogo.com crowdfunding website and within six days he had exceeded his target, allowing him to continue into the New Year. 

“I initially set a target of £4,000 but I managed to secure £6,362. I am absolutely astounded by the generosity of people, some of whom I know and some I have never met.

“I don’t think crowd sourcing would be an effective way of fundraising for investigative journalism though. You couldn’t really tell people what you were working on in advance or else the subject of the investigation would find out.”

A total of 240 people pledged money on the indiegogo website to enable Jukes to continue his coverage until Christmas.

“I do hope to continue in the New Year, but because of my varied work I have a musical coming out and I may need to do some workshops. From a blogging background, I have found covering the trial fascinating. When blogging it is all about opinions but in a trial you have to concentrate on the facts before the jury.”

He advised journalists to consider crowdfunding as a method of raising funds in future.

“I couldn’t stay covering the trial producing one or two freelance articles a week and afford to operate in Central London. It is interesting that people have paid for me to continue at the trial and provide my Twitter stream. They don’t get it exclusively it is available to everyone. I guess they appreciate that for a service to be delivered it requires funding.”

You can follow Jukes' coverage on Twitter @peterjukes.