Thursday's PM on Radio 4 devoted eight and-a-half minutes to an Eddie Mair interview with a listener: a retired man who described his bus ride to Swansea the previous day.

Geoffrey has been suffering from depression and panic attacks and hadn't managed to take the bus for four years.

As part of PM's 'Take a Leap' - in which listeners were invited to do something on 29 February that they had been putting off - Geoffrey had emerged as a star from an earlier interview ahead of the day.

The segment even had its own hashtag, used by one listener like this:

"Oh God; reduced to tears by wonderful, dignified, depressed Welshman discussing #leapforPM on @BBCRadio4. Pure, simple, compelling radio."

And it was.

Mair unfolded the story slowly with Geoffrey, turning it into a mini-epic. There was the son who drove him along the route the day before the 29th. There was the last-minute threat of disaster that night when Geoffrey started "getting the old feelings back", the hints of a coming panic attack, "like someone walking over your grave".

And there was tension on the day: the bus was late.

But Geoffrey managed to climb on board and finally Swansea bus station swung into view "like an airport, huge, spotless, all lit up". You can see the film in your head, and hear John Williams' score.

Then, like in every good film, tension was broken with a comic scene. It turns out that, since he last visited the city, cappuccino, latte and all the rest had arrived, so when Geoffrey asked for a cup of coffee the man "machine gunned these words off that I'd never heard of" and "looked at me as if I'd just landed".

But the man was friendly, Geoffrey got his coffee, and then there were tears when, on the way back to the bus, he encountered his wife and cousin getting off another one. He was punching the air in triumph and "really enjoyed the ride home".

But, just as you might have been starting to think it was time for the credits to roll, the darkness crept back. Geoffrey decided to get off in the village and walk home from there. "The balloon burst" as his started to panic again. He struggled home, shaken, and still sounding shaky as he described it.

It was a case study in a programme having the confidence to go with a marvellous story even if it sounded unlikely.

Everyone emerged well. Geoffrey praised "the way your people have handled me" and credited PM's leap year idea with spurring him on. His son had shown him Twitter with all the encouragement and interest that followed his first interview. So he was determined "not to let people down".

And the BBC put on its most human face, appreciated by a tweeter who commented on the interview, recorded during the afternoon:

"I liked that they let him get away with a pre-recorded 'bullshit' as well. Entirely appropriate and credit to R4/PM."

The interview can be heard on iPlayer, starting at 48.55 into the programme. 

Does Twitter help or hinder the business of reporting a trial in Britain?

I'm not a legal expert. I'm not even a regular court reporter. But I was one of the BBC team covering the Stephen Lawrence murder trial at the Old Bailey in November.

I am also the BBC broadcaster who used Twitter to break news of the verdicts and sentences for Stephen Lawrence's killers.

This is not a polished article. It's my attempt to reflect on the uses - and perils - of Twitter in our courts. Thank you for your comments on the issue; do keep the feedback coming! 

A little about me first. I love using Twitter. It keeps me in touch with stories and contacts around the world, and I enjoy what we've come to call the curation of news - sharing links on everything from London life to 'Arab Spring' politics and the US election campaign.

But this was the first time I'd used social media as another form of broadcasting.

What follows are some reflections about my experience of tweeting the trial. It's a story of two halves - the weeks of the case where I was tweeting about the evidence as it was presented in court, and then the fast-moving hours covering the outcome, where I was talking to camera, using BBC reporters' Twitter accounts as my primary source of news. 

From the first day of the trial on Monday 14 November to the day of the verdicts on Tuesday 3 January, I sent out hundreds of tweets from my @PhilippaNews account.

At first, it was just something I wanted to do for myself. I don't have an official BBC Twitter account. But, as the lawyers delivered their opening statements, newsroom editors were keen to encourage the stream of information coming from me, from Home Affairs reporters @mattprodger and @BBCDomC, and from BBC London's @GuySmithreports.  

It's not something a reporter should be obliged to do. I think it depends on the way you work. There is a danger when writing notes, thinking about scripts and texting tweets that you will miss the subtleties of legal argument; the way that a line of questioning is being developed.

Whenever the judge told the jury to take a break, we would make a beeline for the BBC's Jeremy Britton - our hugely experienced court producer - who would invariably have taken an immaculate shorthand note of the key quotations, from his bench at the back of the courtroom. Because of our ability to tweet and to file copy directly by computer from Court 16, the BBC had less need of news agency copy and could be more self-reliant.

We were able to tweet because the trial judge decided we could. Thank you, Mr Justice Treacy! From now on, following a ruling last month by the Lord Chief Justice, it will be the norm in England and Wales. I believe we're in the middle of a revolution in the way journalists cover justice. 

The Twitter stream is a supplement - an extra service for a minority of the audience. Twitter followers are there by choice. Hundreds more followed me during the trial because they wanted the key developments and dramatic quotes 'in real time'. They liked spreading the word within seconds of it happening in court, to others - often family and friends - who felt passionate about the Stephen Lawrence case.

I expected the service would work for those who were already following the case in detail.  What I didn't anticipate was the appetite from people who use social media as their core news services. 

I was intrigued by signs that I was reaching new audiences. When we broadcast on TV news bulletins, viewers tend to be older. But on Twitter it seemed that many were younger. Many were from ethnic minorities. Many felt strongly about the core issues of the case: racism, violence and justice.

I had responses from followers who were dipping in and out of the story during the day on their work computers or mobile phones, rather than waiting to get home to view TV news. 

Here are a few of the comments I received:

"Guess using Twitter puts more focus on Trial, esp. for younger generations who're always out & about that don't watch TV much."

"For me the character limitation was useful given the pace. The tweets I read were consequently fact - direct quotes and stage directions, omitting comment which in this case would not have been appropriate. Useful in that it also made me aware of more up and coming journos rather than the main faces."

"I dont watch much news, prefer twitter feeds from misc journos. TV news tends to be inane, but you were great."

So was it good journalism? Well, I actually found that thinking for Twitter helped to focus my mind: it made me work harder on choosing the words to sum up forensic evidence, for instance. But, as noted above, there are pitfalls for journalists in trying to do too much and failing to do anything properly - the common lament of our multitasking, multimedia age. It's something we have to address, however enthusiastic we are about using social media to reach out to new audiences.

With court reporting, it's critical to deliver exact quotations, not paraphrases. That doesn't tend to work on Twitter, which requires you to be succinct. On occasion we found that, where a headline quote emerged, we had to follow up, letting the newsdesk and the website know precisely which words came from the barrister and which from the twittering broadcaster.

And it's critical not to lose bits of the argument. The unfolding of evidence in court can be subtle, complicated and time-consuming. We might be writing a series of tweets to cover a single concept but in our followers' timelines those tweets can be interspersed with others, leaving it up to the Twitter user to reconstruct the full picture.

There are also potential problems with the nature of Twitter activity, where followers can retweet and embellish your original posts. My colleague, the experienced BBC correspondent Daniel Boettcher, raised the issue today: what if your name is on a tweet which is circulated elsewhere, appearing in isolation and out of context? As journalists, we're trained to deliver contemporaneous court reporting and to be impartial. Once your tweets are out there, you can lose editorial control. The same could be said of an online commentary, I guess, but again it's a risk we should recognise.

In the second part of this blog I discuss my reporting of the verdicts.

Philippa Thomas is a BBC News correspondent and tweets @PhilippaNews.

''It took me more than 300km to come here and ask my question. And so I will.''

These were the words of a young Tunisian student taking part in Saat Hisab, the Arabic version of the BBC's flagship Question Time.

In Tunisia, the BBC World Service Trust and BBC Arabic produced the show in partnership with Tunisian television two weeks before the parliamentary elections; the first free elections in the history of the country and the first after the revolution.

"I want to ask my question." This time we heard it in Egypt, in El-Menya, a governorate 270km south of Cairo, where Saat Hisab gathered 200 Egyptians from all the Upper Egypt governorates; the most neglected and unsettled part of the country.

Whether in Tunisia or Egypt (below), the audience came to our studio in the hope that the BBC programme would give them an opportunity - for the first time ever - to question their politicians and officials.

In Tunisia, we had two programmes for an hour and-a-half each. All our requests for the audience to keep quiet in the studio during the recording failed. They were loud, talking over each other and over the panel. A typical first exercise in democracy and freedom of speech.

Radhia, a 21-year-old Tunisian student, shouted, asking for the microphone. "I came a very long way," she said. "I have a question and I won't leave until I ask the panel."

Zein Tawfiq, our presenter, could not but listen to her and let her ask the panel - six prominent politicians representing the political spectrum in Tunisia, from the Islamist Al Nahda movement to the Labour Communist party. They all had to answer her questions.

In El-Menya, our panel included three governors, top officials in Egyptian governorates. For the first time, they sat together on the same panel with a young Christian man and a woman activist. For the first time, the officials faced an audience questioning them on security, education, why they cannot find fuel, and the role of the military ruler in post-revolution Egypt.

"Can you tell me how I can sustain my family?" Mohamed, a fisherman who came wearing a traditional long jilbab, asked them.

The recording went for an hour and-a-half - and, once finished, the audience refused to leave. They wanted to continue.

Saat Hisab in both Tunisia and Egypt was part of the BBC World Service Trust's support for state-run television in both countries, helping them to become true public service broadcasters. A team from BBC Arabic produced the programmes alongside local teams.

Our reputation in the region gave us these opportunities, in which the two state-run TV organisations offered their studios and their air time to a foreign broadcaster for the first time.

Egyptian TV is more than 50 years old and Saat Hisab co-produced with the BBC meant a first step towards giving the people the right to question their leaders.

Naglaa El-Emary is the BBC's Cairo Bureau chief and regional special projects editor for BBC Arabic. She has worked as a journalist in Paris, and has a PhD in media studies from the Sorbonne.

The latest dispatch about the life of a BBC journalism trainee, from sports enthusiast Andy Burke:

My first week in radio was an eventful one. I was shadowing one of Radio Scotland's sports news presenters, Annie McGuire, who was showing me the ropes of sports bulletins.

She explained the basics of the VCS system which is used for editing in radio, and the technical stuff about running orders, scripts etc. This was all very interesting but on day-two of my radio stint she turned to me and said: "Do you fancy reading the 2pm bulletin?"

I tried to play it cool: "No problem."

It was now 1pm and, as the penny dropped that I would be going on national radio in less than an hour, I started to panic.

I got my script written early so I could go into the studio and practise several times before going live. Annie joined me in the studio for moral support when my big moment arrived.

At 2.03pm, the newsreader said: "That's the news. Now Andy Burke is here with the sport."

A huge adrenalin rush came over me, but thankfully I kept my cool and made it through the longest 60 seconds of my life without any mistakes. What a buzz!

The next day I was again asked to read the 2pm bulletin. As the previous day had gone so well I was far more relaxed. In fact, I was too relaxed. I did just one practice reading and, when I went live, I had a couple of stumbles. Nothing major, but not a great bulletin.

Preparation is key - lesson learned.

The most enjoyable part for me was doing interviews. I conducted a series of interviews with athletes in contention to make the London 2012 Olympics which I packaged for Radio Scotland's Sport Nation programme.

I also did phone interviews with Britain's number-one female tennis player Elena Baltacha, and during the Rugby World Cup I spoke to former England and British Lions centre Jeremy Guscott. Interviews like these, and speaking to players and managers after football matches, are one of the main reasons why I got into sports journalism.

There is a real art to painting a picture using only words. The pros have spent their entire careers honing the craft.

I loved just getting started.

Andy Burke is on the BBC Journalism Trainee Scheme. Before joining the BBC, Andy represented Scotland at youth-level rugby and had a number of jobs, including at the Ministry of Defence, before his thoughts turned to sports journalism.

The 15 members of the Journalism Trainee Scheme started their year of broadcast training in March. They are offered work in different departments along with career advice, CV clinics and interview practice to help them to find future jobs in the BBC, although there are no guarantees. The scheme has been running since 2007 and the recruitment process for the next intake will start at the end of September. To apply and for more details.

I suspect that when the histories are written the revolution in Libya will occupy a similar place to the Romanian revolution in 1989 - the bloodiest to date but in the end an uprising that lacked much significance for all but its people. 

Libya is not significant in the way Egypt is. Egypt's revolution is crucial. It's still not clear whether the revolution there will stick. What is clear is that it's not over.

So why then has the media studies industry become fixated with coverage of Libya, or more specifically with the fall of Tripoli? Lacking a real battle there to bring the Libyan story to a dramatic conclusion, attention turned suddenly to the battle between the broadcasters - the fight, at the death, between the BBC and Sky; a story from which virtually all other broadcasters have been written out: the moment when Alex Crawford, Sky's multi-award-winning female correspondent, almost singlehandedly slew the mighty - and mostly male -Libyan legions of the BBC.

It is a tale in which the technological tail has been lifted up and praised for wagging the editorial dog: the Sky team managing to point a portable satellite dish in the right direction while on the move as the rebels entered Tripoli. An achievement, to be sure, but not one that should surprise us too much more than 40 years after live pictures were broadcast from the moon.

The perceived battle between the BBC and Sky gives us the latest glimpse of how the immediate attractions of 24-hour news have become the gold standard of today's journalism. It is a story retold with relish by hackademics and TV reviewers, leaving very little room for the work of other broadcasters. It's a story with a distasteful edge: how 'the BBC lost 10-0'; how its correspondent(s) 'missed the bus'; how Sky's correspondent might have been reckless (firmly and convincingly denied by Alex Crawford); whether other reporters 'lacked balls'.

It's a story that may lead aspiring young journalists to draw the wrong conclusions. It's even a story that could cost lives. So let's redress the balance.

The truth is everyone has been the first into somewhere; the BBC or Channel 4 News here, Sky or ITV News there. During 'the Arab Spring' there were several occasions when ITN, which produces the news for both ITV and Channel 4, was 'first'.

I was in Tripoli, frustrated by the near impossibility of getting through Gaddafi's roadblocks to the besieged city of Misrata, when I watched John Irvine's astonishing ITV report from there. He was the first British broadcaster to report from inside the city, a coup achieved by bypassing Gaddafi's forces on a ship from Malta. The bravery and brilliance of Irvine and his cameraman Sean Swan (on a front-line that later claimed the lives of Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros), the sheer power of their report has faded amid the clamour over Tripoli. But he was first.

I was part of the first group of journalists allowed official access to Tripoli in March 2011. Not a coup, of course, since we had simply been chosen from a list produced by the Gaddafi regime. The night I arrived I interviewed Gaddafi's son Saif. Sky News wasn't in Tripoli that night. Also on that trip was the BBC's excellent Middle East Editor Jeremy Bowen. One week in he interviewed Colonel Gaddafi.

Before anyone can accuse me of sour grapes, let me make one thing clear. Alex Crawford and her team did brilliantly. I will toast her future success and have already congratulated her on her scoops. But the media studies industry is in danger of agreeing on a new received wisdom which is as false as that which once said Sky News is not worth watching.

It goes something like this: Channel 4 News is irreproachable, anchored by the unbeatable Jon Snow; BBC News is failing in its public service duty to provide the very best broadcasting and analysis; the upstart Sky News is whipping the BBC's ass around the world; ITV News has lost its 'kudos and influence'; and Channel 5 News isn't worth mentioning.

It's a strange narrative.

Bill Neely is the International Editor of ITV News. He has just returned from Syria, where he led the first (!) TV news team into the troubled city of Hama.

A longer version of this post appears in Mirage in the Desert? Reporting the Arab Spring, edited by John Mair and Richard Lance Keeble, and published by Abramis. 

To say I was nervous is an understatement. It was only the second time I had run a major story. I had never been to Perugia. And I had covered neither the trial nor the appeal of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito. Covering the result of their appeal was a big deal.

By rights it should have been the formidable Patti Partee. She had been across the story from the start and had wanted very much to be there at the end. But sadly she died the week before.

There I was, in a beautiful medieval city with the clock ticking down to verdict day. There were lots of things that needed organising, but there were four priorities:

- Getting a truck to the right place

- Making sure radio outlets got what they needed

- Making sure the TV and radio backgrounders were done

- Making sure the verdict, when it came, could be understood.

The truck

The BBC World Newsgathering planning team in London had done a deal with the US network ABC allowing us to use the second path on its truck whenever we needed it for tape-feeds and TV lives. But it soon became clear that there was a problem. Instead of having a view of the doors to the court, the ABC truck looked out over the beautiful hills of Umbria.

The distance between the court and the truck was only a five-minute walk at most, but it might as well have been a million miles away. Use this location on verdict day and we would miss all the action.

Priority number one: to find a way of broadcasting live and in quality from the court. Thanks to the heroic efforts of our fixer, Carlo Catalognia, we got a high-speed ADSL line installed in super-quick time. It cost us a couple of hundred euros but it meant we could do broadband V-point lives from the court. It looked good and was great in the run up to the verdict, but it was not the total solution. V-point technology can be temperamental at the best of times.

The last thing I wanted was for us to drop off air during the highly pressurised moments when Amanda Knox's appeal verdict was announced. We would need a truck outside the court to see us through the day.

Money is tight in the BBC and it is spread across a number of different departments. World planning only had the money for a TV truck on the day of the verdict itself. For the operation to work, other bits of BBC TV news programming were going to have to help. A call to Kevin Bakhurst, the boss at the BBC News Channel, secured a promise to help pay for a truck if the coverage ran for longer than a day.

The truck arrived early in the afternoon before verdict day - we had already used our hire car to bag the ideal spot for it outside the court. After a few initial problems (the generator blew up), the truck was up and running. The TV team had a good, secure live position. The radio gang put their satellite dishes on the roof and turned the front seats into an ad-hoc studio. And we used the ADSL line we had fitted to surf the wires.

The translation

We knew that Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito were going to address the court in Italian on the final day of the appeal. And the judge, when he delivered the outcome, was bound to speak in Italian too. We wanted to broadcast all three of these statements live, so we were going to a translator at BBC Television Centre, preferably one with knowledge of the Italian legal system. I sent out an early email asking for help - and Anna Williams at BBC World and Driss Mekkaoui booked someone for us.

But that wasn't quite the end of it. On the morning of the outcome we got a heads up that it was going to be far from simple to understand. The judge was going to speak in code. Mention the number 530 and he would be talking about acquittal. The number 533 would indicate he was talking about conviction. And then he would talk about A for murder, B for rape and so on. This was going to put a lot of pressure on our translator and on our wonderful anchor, Luisa Baldini. I talked things through with Luisa and spoke at length to the translator, going through each of the possible outcomes the judge might come up with.

The translator went away to do some more research of his own to get things clear in his mind. I then spoke to the editors on duty at the News Channel and BBC World to brief them on what to expect and talk through how we would like to play it when the judgment came. The moment itself was still adrenalin-packed. I am glad we prepared for it in the way we did.

The radio correspondent

When I arrived in Perugia, the reporting team was made up of Daniel Sandford, who would mainly report for network TV, Luisa Baldini, who would do live and continuous outlets, and Matt Cole, who is employed by the regional news service. As it stood, there was not going to be anyone dedicated to providing material for BBC Radio 4, 5 Live or the World Service.

After some negotiation and lobbying by the radio stations, it was agreed that Matt Cole would get some production help and that he would become the news correspondent for all outlets once the story broke. Ahead of verdict day, Matt pre-prepared a couple of versions of the generic minute news piece that he would file as soon as the outcome was clear.

All he had to do once the result was out was check the copy for accuracy and tweak a few lines. This saved precious minutes when the pressure was on. We rigged a second m4 onto the roof of the truck, allowing Matt to be on air with one station while his producer, Imogen Anderson, patched guests through on the second line.

The backgrounders

While I was working on the logistics, the reporting team and its producers worked on the backgrounders that were cut and cleared a day ahead of the expected verdict. Luisa spent the best part of a day re-reading her notes and preparing what she would say on air at the time of the outcome. Something which stood her in good stead, as she single-handedly sustained the output for the best part of an hour before the judge even started to speak.

When the verdict came, both the translator and Luisa got it right on air straightaway. Thanks to our spot next to RAI and Mediaset, we were able to grab a live interview with some of the key players in the case. Luisa, with her producer Jenny Mossblad close at hand, kept going with several hours of raw but compelling broadcasting. Daniel and his producer Bruno Boelpaep and camera team Maarten Lernout and Anthony Stafford had an hour and-a-half after the verdict to cut a strong piece for the BBC Ten O'Clock News. Matt Cole and Imogen Anderson did not stop broadcasting. Thanks as well to our truck operator, Shane Adams, and our live cameraman, Andrea.

But none of it would have worked nearly as well without the lovely, clever and funny Carlo Catalognia who fixed the unfixable every step of the way.

Wietske Burema is Europe producer for BBC News, based in Brussels.

Simon Waldman is the BBC News Channel's Morning Editor. He was just finishing his stint in the gallery on 11 September 2001 and expecting to do the school run as usual at 4pm. The teachers were very understanding when he didn't make it...

It had been a humdrum morning on the still relatively new News 24. We'd been concentrating on Eurotunnel's court attempt to get the Sangatte refugee camp closed, and were gearing up for Prime Minister Blair's 'crucial' address that afternoon to the TUC. Tony's speech never got on.

A rookie picture producer, a week into the job, spotted smoke - a LOT of smoke - coming from one of the World Trade Center towers in New York, courtesy of a locked off shot of the Manhattan skyline from US broadcaster ABC. We put it to air after a brief, if slightly heated, discussion about the merits or otherwise of a fire in a far-away skyscraper. That shot sustained many hours of rolling coverage.

But at that stage we had no idea what we were dealing with. Presenters John Nicolson and Valerie Sanderson, with business presenter John Terrett (it all started during the slot normally allocated to business news), found themselves having to commentate over pictures which defied description. The early wire copy which mentioned a plane prompted a mental image of a private light aircraft losing its bearings - not a passenger airliner being used as a weapon. Minutes later, when the second jet hit the second tower, many of us thought initially that we were looking at a tape replay of the first plane going into the first tower.

By the time reports started coming in of the attack on the Pentagon and the fourth airliner coming down in Pennsylvania, it was clear that the United States was indeed under terrorist attack. Nothing could have prepared any of the team for such an eventuality. News 24 was being simulcast on BBC1 (still something of a rarity then), flights were being grounded around the world and phone lines to both Washington and New York were down. Could London be the next target? There were more than a few nervous glances out of the windows of Television Centre in London, but a mixture of instinct and adrenalin kicked in. Personal emotions took a back seat as the team of journalists in the newsroom tried to make sense of rapidly developing events.

When the first tower collapsed we were painfully aware we had broadcast live the moment hundreds of people died. And before either tower fell the live shot was punctuated with tiny specks falling or jumping from the windows. The debate about 'moment of death' - and the BBC's policy of not showing it in almost all circumstances - filled many hours in the weeks that followed. That afternoon, though, there was never any question of not showing the live coverage from Manhattan.

The impact of that September afternoon, particularly on those caught up in the attacks and the families and friends of the victims, cannot be underestimated. The world changed radically that day. I think the BBC newsroom changed too. We began with what seemed to be a potentially interesting 'picture' story. We went rapidly through a kaleidoscope of reaction and emotion - fascination, incomprehension, disbelief, dawning realisation, numbing horror.

We were dealing with terrorism on a so-far unimaginable scale, and yet the newsroom team simply got on with the job. For many, it was only later - that night, or even days afterwards - that the scale of what had happened began to hit home.

I was on the ground floor of the South Tower when the first plane hit the North Tower. It sounded like a huge skip of concrete falling from a great height. Some dust or smoke came through the lobby and people started rushing through urging us to get out. I fumbled on the floor for my MiniDisc and recorded maybe 20 seconds of atmos which turned out to be useless.

I then left the building and crossed the road to a newsagent, seeing the burning top of the North Tower over my shoulder. I persuaded the shopkeeper to let me use his phone to call the desk in London. Mobile phones then were rare. 

The desk put me through to various radio programmes and I was on the air at the top of the hour. 

I was also on the air when the second plane hit the South Tower above us, though I didn't see it because the phone line didn't stretch to the door. The newsagent insisted on closing and pulling down the shutters. He refused - I'm pleased to say - my offer of my credit card in return for continued use of his phone. To get a phone, I went into empty neighbouring shops (I remember Kinkos) and wandered round trying the phones - nine or zero for an outside line, all to no avail. So I went to the Embassy Suites on Vesey Street by the North Tower and hired a room for the phone. 

I can remember looking out and seeing a line of neat fire trucks and thinking everything was OK because the authorities had arrived. I was on the air - I think to News 24 - when the North Tower collapsed, cutting the line off. I can remember ranting at this. The hotel alarm went off and we evacuated down a back stairs in an orderly fashion.

I then headed towards the East River, seeking a crew to do a piece to camera. Eventually, I did a deal with a crew from TechTV: I would give them an eyewitness account and they would record a PTC. During my account, the South Tower collapsed behind me (above). I then decided to head uptown and cadged a lift. 

I sat on the back seat with a Chinese-American woman who was going into labour. Her thoughts were flitting between the big event in her own body and the big event she was leaving. She gave me a phone number for her husband which, I'm ashamed to say, I lost somehow in the flurry. Later in the day, I retrieved the tape from TechTV and fed it to London.

Some thoughts: very quickly presenters in London knew more than I did. It didn't need any dressing up - no purple prose or false gravitas - just tell it. I was very angry at the attacks, seeing them as a personal attack on me and on democracy, but I think I kept that off the air.  Should I have?

Stephen Evans is now the BBC's Berlin Correspondent.

The is the first in a short series of personal memories of the coverage of 9/11, around the tenth anniversary of the attack.  

She trended worldwide on Twitter. Alex Crawford of Sky News was one of the first three journalists - all women - to enter Green Square in Tripoli with the Libyan rebels. She broadcast live to the world from the back of a pickup truck. "The most exhilarating moment for all of us," she called it.

Her explanation of that coup? "Right people, right place, right time."

Crawford has already won the prestigious Royal Television Society Reporter of the Year award three times (a record). That will be broken when she wins it again in February for this stunning piece of reporting.

Her Sunday had started in Zawiyah to the east but ended in Green Square, Tripoli - thanks to luck, judgment, courage and contacts developed during a siege in the town five months before when Crawford had been besieged in a mosque. "I was getting ready for death," she recalled.

This is a woman born to be on the frontline. She understands the risks but also the responsibilities. She also sees the pressing need for professional journalists to report - even in a world of Twitter and Facebook. "I feel really privileged to do this job. We make a difference - it's what we do. We bear witness to what is going on... it adds credibility having journalists' boots on the ground."

Working with a team you can trust is all important. Alex spoke to a distinguished audience at the Edinburgh International TV Festival and made a point of introducing her three-man team to camera (above, from interview on Sky website). Her live footage of rebel forces entering Tripoli came about because Crawford, her camera operators Garwen McLuckie and Jim Foster and producer Andy Marsh, decided to be brave and go with the rebels on a dangerous, possibly fatal, journey to Tripoli. It ended in triumph for them and for her.

Crawford fought her Sky bosses to be reporting from the frontline. She wants to be a firefighter on the world stage, walking towards trouble rather than away from it. Yet she is also a mother to four children who live with her husband Richard Edmondson, a racing journalist who left his job at The Independent to help look after their children at their South African base.

Combining the two roles is not always easy. Her family were not overjoyed when she decided to become a foreign correspondent: "I had own doubts. My family did too. I wanted it more than their doubts," she admitted. And they still sometimes express their wish to have her at home: 

"Quite often my children don't want me to go away. My husband tries to shield them from what I am doing. It's a dilemma for many single working mothers. I hope I'm a role model for my daughters, although my children say 'Why can't you be a dinner lady at school.'"

Having broken through the glass ceiling and domestic doubts, she still faces professional prejudice. She told her Edinburgh audience she found it "really insulting and very, very sexist" to be asked about how she raised her children when her Sky News colleague Stuart Ramsay, a father of three, would not face similar questions. "Nobody will say to him - what are you doing?" she added.

She does however think her gender is of some consequence: "I don't think of myself as a female reporter, just a reporter." But it does offer an alternative perspective: "I think, as a woman, you bring a different view to the whole thing... a woman who's been through the same experiences, even if it's giving birth, that gives you an empathy."

She is ever ready to walk toward the fires and firing for her noble craft. "The role of foreign correspondent, to be there when things happen" is her simple credo. Her determination and professionalism is what wins awards.

Back to that siege in Zawiyah in March: "I remember feeling we had to get the news out, we had to show people what was happening, and if we were going to die we should let everyone know that this is what happened." Yet she is not reckless. "Do I feel gung-ho? A lot of the time I feel scared," she confessed.

Three RTS awards under her belt, 'Crawfie', as she is affectionately known to her colleagues,  is on the road to more gongs. "I feel like I've just started. I've only been doing this for six years." 

John Mair is one of the editors of Mirage in the Desert: Reporting the Arab Spring, to be published by Arima in October. He was one of judges of the RTS Reporter of the Year award for 2010 which Crawford won.

In the age of 24-hour news, every war needs a media star. In the early days of rolling news it was Peter Arnett of CNN. A decade later, John Simpson was credited with "liberating" Kabul from the Taliban. In 2003, Rageh Omaar's reports from Baghdad earned him the soubriquet the "Scud Stud".

In recent days, as power in Libya has slipped from Colonel Gadaffi's hands, the standout performer of the news channels has undoubtedly been Alex Crawford of Sky News.

On Sunday and the days since, Crawford - not forgetting her team of Garwen McLuckie, Jim Foster and Andy Marsh - has provided riveting live coverage of the rebel advance into Tripoli.

In his book Frontline, my colleague David Loyn wryly notes that "American television crews travel abroad with the same amount of kit as a major imperial expedition of the 19th century or indeed the ancient army of King Darius." Crawford and her team have scooped their rivals using little more than a laptop and a small BGAN satellite dish powered by a car cigarette lighter socket.

Crawford's reporting has unquestionably been world-class. She has been praised by all sections of the news industry, including many people who would normally be considered rivals. A shower of awards will surely follow, to add to her three RTS prizes - and rightly so.

But let's not lose sight of the fact that war reporting is not a game of football in which there are 'winners' and 'losers', title contenders and bottom-of-the-league strugglers.

While Alex Crawford was broadcasting from Green Square on Sunday night, my colleague Matthew Price was hemmed in with his team at the Rixos Hotel (above and left) as fierce fighting continued outside the building.

Flipping between the news channels, the political commentator Iain Dale posted a tweet of almost breathtaking ignorance. He described Price as a "wimp" for wearing his flak jacket inside the hotel, speculating that "he's been told he can't go out because of 'Elf and Safety'."

Earlier this year, Matthew won the Sony Gold Award for News Journalist of the Year. He has two Emmy nominations to his name. Dale's comment prompted an immediate Twitterstorm.

To his credit, Dale made a swift and unreserved apology and took up my suggestion of making a donation to the Rory Peck Trust, a charity working to support the welfare of freelance newsgatherers. 

The deteriorating and increasingly volatile situation in the Rixos since Sunday has highlighted the stupidity of Dale's ill-considered tweet.

Arguing over which broadcaster is 'winning' the Battle for Tripoli may be fine sport from behind the shelter of a laptop screen. In the real world, however - outside the hothouse atmosphere of Twitter and blogs - journalists are putting their lives on the line in the most perilous circumstances - as Rupert Wingfield Hayes' report from the Libyan frontline made vividly clear. According to Reporters Without Borders, almost 40 journalists have been killed so far this year.

In the fevered and competitive world of 24-hour news it's inevitable that comparisons will be made between each network's coverage. But, please, let's leave the post-match analysis of which broadcaster 'won' the media war until all our friends and colleagues working in harm's way are home safely.

Stuart Hughes is World Affairs Producer for BBC News.

Although I never had the pleasure of working with Nick Clarke, I knew him well enough to chat about the stories he was working on whenever I ran into him.

One of the most powerful remarks he made about the principles that underpinned his interviewing for BBC Radio 4's World at One continues to be as relevant now as it was when we talked about it:

"Call me old-fashioned," he said, "but when I ask someone a question I like to hear their answer."

Nick's comment defined the polite but firm and forensic school of journalism to which he subscribed that made his interviews such compelling and revealing listening.

The award that was founded in his honour - the Nick Clarke Award - is entering its fourth year. Entries are now invited for the 2011 title. Judges are looking for interviews (as broadcast) which left a strong impression on the audience as well as a deeper understanding of the subject matter featured in the piece.

Entries should be submitted to the address below or by email to gillian.dear@bbc.co.uk.

Gillian Dear
Room G620
BBC Television Centre
Wood Lane
London
W12 7RJ

The closing date is 8 September. One entry per programme and person, and the interview must be submitted exactly as broadcast. The winner will be announced at this year's Times Cheltenham Literature Festival on Sunday 10 October.

Listen to last year's winner featuring PD James interviewing Mark Thompson, Director-General of the BBC, on the Today programme.

"Barça, Barça, Baaaaarça!"

I was on holiday, in the middle of my time on the BBC's Journalism Trainee Scheme.

People were dangling from the tops of light stands, others climbing up palm trees, and more jumping up and down in a haze of deep red and blue on the Arc de Triomf - all angling their heads for a view of the big screen showing the Manchester United versus FC Barcelona UEFA Champion's League final, 700 miles away.

There was a whisper: "¡Mira el BBC!"

Sure enough, on the corner of a raised flowerbed was a man wearing a bright-red BBC World Service shirt. He was holding up a square satellite transmitter and patrolling a triangle of grass to secure a signal for one of the BBC's Spanish correspondents.

A week earlier I'd organised a day's work experience at the World Service and had met Red Shirt.

I went over.

He shouted at me: "No! Go around!"

And then, "Oh, hello!"

He'd been in Madrid the day before and had come to Barcelona on his way back to London to help out the Spanish correspondent with a series of live broadcasts to different BBC radio stations. Then he had to set up some people ready to talk on air for the World Service.

I knew how important good contributors were to Red Shirt from the day I'd done work experience on the programme, and it seemed like his hands were full. So when I went back to watching the game I kept my ears open for English.

An explosion - I squeezed through a batch of sweaty Barcelona fans and Pedro Rodriguez scored the first goal of the game.

A couple of men in front of me jumped in unison then fell about laughing. A phrase slipped out, "Who are you supporting?"

It's times like these when you can be thankful that English is a universal language. Waiting until they finished their conversation, I spoke to them.

One, Paulo, was Portuguese and didn't think his English was strong enough to speak on air. The other, Naeem, was perfect. He'd only just arrived in Barcelona after travelling from Pakistan to study.

In his home town he owned a factory that made footballs and he had always been a Barcelona fan. I texted Red Shirt.

My phone bleeped back almost immediately: "Let's have him."

Another text: "You are a megastar!"

A collective sigh as Rooney scored for United.

After Naeem, I found Jordi, who was a Catalan and had supported Barcelona since childhood. He was there with his wife and two young sons.

Another roar and more fireworks as Messi scored in the second half; after his near-miss at the end of the first.

Then I spoke to Juan, a car engineer from just outside the city.

A goal again. Light stands shook as David Villa secured Barcelona's champions status. Crowds were jumping and singing.

It was the end of the match and the air felt tacky with the remnants of a tense game and the anticipation of all-night parties. I took my troupe of contributors back to Red Shirt and briefed them on what to expect and what not to do on air.

It's strange to know that the radio output you're helping to create, in whatever small way, will be beamed back to a studio you've stood in, then transmitted to the country you've grown up in.

More than that - it will be broadcast to places you may never see.

It keeps you thinking about how important it is to do your work well. I've worked in bars, bakeries, hotels and bookshops before now and it takes a special job for you to want to do it while you're on holiday.

Something that the Journalism Trainee Scheme had really driven into me was to take every chance you can get. Speak to everyone, because good radio is a good conversation. Read everything, because it gives you an example of different writing styles; and if you read unusual things you'll find unusual stories (on this trip I'd found a story in Barcelona's chocolate museum).

If you really want to be a journalist, I don't think it should feel like a job - it should feel like settling into the person you want to be. And that's what the trainee scheme can help you to do.

Originally from Barrow-in-Furness, Hannah Livingston studied English literature at the University of East Anglia before editing the student newspaper. After working for the university's press office, she moved to Edinburgh before joining BBC Scotland in Glasgow.