Jan 1998 – Jan 2000: Reporter/Editor, Slough & Windsor Express Newspapers, Berks., United Kingdom
I began my career as a junior reporter on the Windsor desk at the Slough & Windsor Express series.
One of my first scoops was the launch of a campaign to free two Scots Guards imprisoned in Northern Ireland for killing a Catholic teenager who ran through an army checkpoint. Guardsmen James Fisher and Mark Wright were freed from Maghaberry Prison near Lisburn, Co Antrim, after a two-year long campaign. I was subsequently shortlisted and commended in the Newcomer of the Year category of the BT London & Northern Home Counties Press & Broadcast Awards in 1998 for my work on the campaign.
In the same year, I was promoted to edit the Ascot edition of the newspaper and covered another international story from a local angle: Manjit Basuta, a nanny formerly from the area who was accused of causing the death of a child at her daycare centre in San Diego, California. I worked with her extended Slough-based family as well as the lawyer representing Basuta in the U.S. I also travelled to San Diego to cover a court appearance where sentencing was postponed.
Basuta was jailed for 25 years at the end of 1999 and subsequently released in 2003 after admitting mistreatment of the toddler in plea bargain.