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Page 94, the Private Eye

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podcast. Hello and welcome

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to part three of the

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Paul Foot Award Private Eye page 94

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special this year. Very exciting, very much

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the Godfather part three of the satirical

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podcast world and there's

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going to be a ritual bloodletting later on. Before that

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we are here with Podrick Reedy

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who is the Chief of Judges as you have been for

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how many years now Podrick? Is this

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six or seven? I think it's six. 2017 I think when it

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was brought back from a

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brief hiatus after a certain

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news organization pulled this plug on the funding. We

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should say that was the Guardian who pulled the plug on the funding.

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Podrick, how many entries did you have this year? We

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always talk about the short list but maybe it's worth talking about the

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long list and in fact the pre-long list. Well

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Amelia who does the PR for

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the award

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told me once never to reveal the exact

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number because you always

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kind of get trapped in always having to beat the exact

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number. What I can say is that in my time doing this

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which is six years now it was the second

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highest number we've

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ever had and the

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only year that beat that was the first year of lockdown

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when people clearly had nothing better to do and

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everyone was at home, not in the office,

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nothing was working so they thought why the hell not

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enter. So this year with a fully functioning press

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back again we've had the second highest

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and by a very close margin number of entries

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which was both brilliant obviously

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for the award and also quite daunting for

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me in particular because I do have to read every single

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one. The

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other thing we should say is about the timing with which they're

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delivered so Maisie whose voice you

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hear at the start of every episode of Page 94 was saying with about six hours

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to go there are hardly any submissions this year and

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as always they come in an absolute flood right on the deadline.

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Right on. Every March myself and

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Maisie send each other messages daily saying

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have you looked at the Spreadsheet of Doom, have you updated

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the spreadsheet of Doom and we both

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panic and then on the morning of July 13

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running within an hour, literally

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within an hour, four-fifths of the entries

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turn up. As we've talked so much in

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previous years about the shortlist

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and the longlist, I know you're going to say they're all brilliant.

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There's a range of journalism in there. There are so

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many, you know, there are different kinds of journalism, different

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kinds of story, all from different

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kinds of writers. I wonder what

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advice you would give to people listening

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to this, maybe hacks listening to this, who want to get their

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story onto next year's Paul

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for the World Shortlist. I think there are

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two elements for this.

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There is, you know, when we think about it, there is the

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investigation and there is the campaign.

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And for me, actually, the campaign part is very important.

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It's the perseverance, the sticking

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with something. And I think that's the one thing

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that unites all the entries this

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year is, you know, these aren't some piece

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of inspiration or having one source

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that was cultivated. Everything here is the result

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of months and sometimes years

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of hard work, slog, jol

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and slow-moving legal battles even, just

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to even get to the point of publication.

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I guess, you know, people are lucky

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to have great editors who will give

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them that scope and that space. But this

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is proof that those efforts

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and that kind of journalism is rewarded.

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Thanks very much, Podrick. So there you have it. Let's

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go live now to the stage where Ian Heslop is

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about to announce the winner of this year's

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Paul Foote Award. Over to you.

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So

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the Paul Foote Awards 2023

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and the winner is David

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Cone from The Guardian. So

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there you have it. David Cone of The Guardian has won

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this year's Paul Foote Award for his brilliant story

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about Baroness Michelle Moan and

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the £200 million

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PPE contract that was awarded

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via the government's VIP lane during

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the pandemic, which went to a company initially

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denied to be anything at all to do

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with Moan, her husband and their grown up children,

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and

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David's brilliant work was revealed

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to be quite a bit to do with all that. David,

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congratulations. Thank you very much.

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It's really fantastic.

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And just to be mentioned in the same

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frame in any kind of way as Paul thought

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is just such a huge... It's

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quite hard to actually maybe even for people

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to understand, but when we were

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growing... Because of the generation I am,

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you're genuinely growing up. Like

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reading Paul thought and some

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very, very few others as like the absolute

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pinnacle of journalism. And I

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think it's not even just the

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actual work he did, but knowing

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that what he was doing was trying

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to uncover and unpick and overturn

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miscarriages of justice. I think

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with people of my generation, that really

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embedded in us the idea that that is

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the pinnacle of journalism. That's what we need to be

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focusing on. Of everything else

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that we could be doing,

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we need to realise that there's people in

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prison who shouldn't be in prison. There's injustices

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that should not be maintained. We

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should also say there are people who aren't in prison who

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maybe should be. Well,

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you might say that, Andrew. So,

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yeah, it's a massive, massive privilege.

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So thank you very much. Ian,

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another great year for investigative journalism. Yes,

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incredibly cheering. And we had a brilliant

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short list and any of them could have won. And,

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you know, we had

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three big national stories, but also three

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much smaller stories that were equally

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beautifully handled. And I

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read various resumes of them, but basically,

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and you have done this much

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better on the previous episodes, the

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sheer amount of effort to get through

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that wall of hassle

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and secrecy in all the cases

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is brilliant. So, I mean,

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we had a huge number of entries. So all

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I can say is, you know, get going for next

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year. Get your entries.

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in and obviously suck

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up to your editors appallingly to

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make sure they do it. Okay,

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that's it for this episode of Page 94. We hope

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you've enjoyed listening and seeing this brilliant

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glimpse at the cold face of British investigative journalism.

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We will be back next year with

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another one of these, but before then we will

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probably squeeze in just a few more episodes of

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the regular podcast where we speak to

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the brilliant hacks who write the magazine itself about

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the stories they've been working on and get a bit

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more insight into their processes and

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all the interesting

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crunchy things they

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found out along the way. Thanks for listening to

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this, which as ever has been produced by Matt

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Hill of Rethink Audio. We'll see you next

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time.