Tag Archives: Tom Warren

Former HMI Health editor named best new journalist of the year at British Journalism Awards

Former Help Me Investigate Health editor Tom Warren has been named best new journalist of the year at British Journalism Awards.

Tom, who joined the Bureau of Investigative Journalism last year, won the award for stories on payday loan lenders, party political funding, and the flotation of shares in Royal Mail. He said:

“Before I was a professional journalist HMI taught me skills and made me contacts that I couldn’t have picked up anywhere else. It was a great place to cut my teeth – and I’m not the only one. I can think of several former HMI’ers who have gone on to top jobs in journalism. It’s been a real powerhouse in that respect.”

Some of the data for the payday lenders story was collected by Help Me Investigate.

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism report on their site that judges said:

“Tom made great use of data and technology to unearth stories and details. He picked targets that no-one else was looking at to bring new information to light on matters of real public interest.

“He used excellent detective work to reveal the privileged bidders who profiteered from the Royal Mail flotation, forcing the Government to release the full list.”

The award came the day after another former HMI contributor, Beth Ashton, won an award for her work at the Manchester Evening News.

Help Me Investigate in 2013 – and 2014

As Help Me Investigate starts to plan new investigations in 2014, it’s a good time to look back at what we’ve been up to over the last year across the four sites (not including this blog). It’s easy to forget how much you do in a year – thanks to the many contributors who made everything below happen. As always, we’ve learned a lot and hit the new year wiser.

HMI Health

Help Me Investigate Health kicked off the year by organising an event on reporting the new health system with the BBC College of JournalismIn April we took part in and reported on a masterclass on health reporting organised by the National Union of Journalists and in May we spoke at and liveblogged a Medical Journalists Association event on the reorganised NHS.

HSJ logo

HMI Health editor Tom Warren and HMI Education editor Matt Burgess worked with the Health Service Journal to compile a list of FOI emails for clinical commissioning groups – the new bodies controlling health spending.

And we scraped the data that helped Scotland’s Sunday Post report on councils abandoning elderly people because they couldn’t afford the care at home and a 7% increase in absenteeism in Scottish authorities.

We also reported on Barnet, Enfield and Hillingdon referring fewer than 4% of depressed patientsNHS Merseyside spending £65,000 on re-hiring staff who worked for its predecessor, and the worst times to go to A&E in the Midlands. Continue reading

HMI Health compiles clinical commissioning group FOIs for health sector magazine

Over on Help Me Investigate Health, we’ve published a list of Freedom of Information emails for clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) – the new bodies controlling local health spending in England.

The list was compiled two months ago for Health Service Journal by Tom Warren and Matt Burgess, shortly after the new bodies took control, but is only now being published by HMI.

As part of the process, Matt and Tom also compiled a spreadsheet of CCG websites and FOI webpages.

Following FOI requests – making the most of WhatDoTheyKnow

Over on Help Me Investigate Health, Tom Warren has written a guide to using the Freedom of Information tool WhatDoTheyKnow. Key tips include:

  • Consider sending an FOI directly to the authority if you want to keep it private – but also remember that doing so publicly can be a great way to find contacts and ideas
  • You can use the site to find out an authority’s FOI email address
  • Use advanced search techniques in Google to search just that site

Read the post in full here.