Pall Mall Gazette, 1885
William Thomas Stead was the editor of the Pall Mall Gazette and father of British red-top journalism. In 1885, he launched a campaign against child prostitution in a famous series he called “The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon” and, to show the true horror of the situation, arranged to buy Eliza Armstrong, the 13-year-old daughter of a chimney sweep. A splendid scoop in one way: it led to the passing of the Criminal Law Amendment Act. But a disaster for Stead in another. He was, ludicrously, sent to prison for not getting due permission from Eliza’s father Photograph: Hulton Archive
New York World 1887
Nellie Bly (real name Elizabeth Jane Cochran, above) was a 23-year-old journalist without a job when she walked into the offices of Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World in 1887 and was given the daunting assignment of exposing the horrors of the Blackwell’s Island Insane Asylum. She rehearsed feverishly. She played mad. “Undoubtedly demented… a hopeless case,” said one of the doctors who admitted her. But inside the asylum she chronicled the awful food and awful conditions that spurred reform. A brilliant reporter; a brilliant example Photograph: Bettmann/Corbis
Daily Mirror, 1936
Everyone remembers the humiliation of the 'Hitler diaries' hoax - but who remembers the Daily Mirror’s scoop interview with the Führer in 1936? Hitler’s 'let’s be friends' plea to the world with an accompanying editorial talking about 'a glow of summer sunshine across the wintry scene of European confusion'? It’s the oldest newspaper lesson going: just because you’ve got an exclusive doesn’t mean it’s any good. And just because somebody is difficult to talk to and gives you his time doesn’t mean that he’s a 'man of destiny' Photograph: Public Domain
Sunday Times, 1972
Perhaps the Sunday Times’ campaign on behalf of Britain’s thalidomide victims wasn’t a classic scoop, but to dig away, year after year, until the mighty Distillers company finally recognised its debt to thousands of thalidomide victims deformed by a terrible drug showed outstanding courage. A scoop is normally a clean, jolting hit on a bold front page. The Sunday Times was certainly bold. But it was also dogged, battering away in print and in law until, finally, the European Court of Human Rights decided that a newspaper had made a big difference Photograph: Jane Bown/Observer
Washington Post, 1972
The most famous investigation, and series of scoops, in newspaper history as Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein (above) of the Washington Post (with a little help from Deep Throat) brought the presidency of Richard Nixon to a juddering halt. He authorised an election break-in to Democratic party offices; he knew the burglars; he even recorded his dirty orders on tape. But he was the most powerful elected leader in the world and they were just a couple of young reporters. Watergate has become the dream story for generations of journalists since Photograph: AP
News of the World, 1992
Think of another press crisis. Newspapers 'are drinking in the last chance saloon', says David Mellor, the secretary of state responsible for closing the bar. Then the bedroom where Mellor is having an affair with actress Antonia de Sancha (above with publicist Max Clifford) is bugged, tapes sold to the News of the World and it’s Mellor himself who struggles to survive. Did he suck Antonia’s toes? Whatever happened, Mellor’s plans to constrain the press took a back seat and it only took a controversial free holiday to end his ministerial career. 'Toe job to no job,' crowed the Sun Photograph: Rex Features/Rex Features
Guardian, 1995
In April 1995, when I was editor, the Guardian’s front page asked why Jonathan Aitken, when minister for defence procurement, had had his bill for a stay at the Ritz hotel in Paris paid for by a Saudi prince. It was a story Aitken himself fanned when he announced a fight “to cut out the cancer of bent and twisted journalism in this country” with what he termed “the sword of truth”. But the sword broke in two a couple of years later following Aitken’s claim that his wife paid the bill (she wasn’t in Paris) and he was sentenced to 18 months in prison for perjury. It has never been established why he went to the Ritz Photograph: Guardian
Novaya Gazeta, various dates
Anna Politkovskaya was murdered in October 2006. She is perhaps the most famous and courageous reporter of our times. Was it a single scoop of hers from inside Chechnya - from the shattered houses, the barracks, the graveyards - that eclipses all the others? Not really: time and again, the reader of her dispatches is bound to wince at the inhumanity she revealed and the intense humanity of her prose. Politkovskaya was not a balanced journalist in the BBC mode. She was a fighter, a campaigner, a furious force of nature outraged by the cruelty she found in a land where few dared to follow her Photograph: Yuri Kochetkov/EPA
Telegraph, 2009
Are stolen goods, bought by the highest bidder, the stuff of great scoops? Absolutely - if they’re the Daily Telegraph’s documentation of phoney, padded or just straight fictitious Members of Parliament’s expenses claims, unleashing a tidal wave of reforms and retribution in 2009. The fact that the Daily Telegraph paid for this story is part of its continuing controversiality. But don’t forget that the Times declined to pay when offered the evidence - or that the BBC’s director general says that he wouldn’t have been able to consider forking out. Sometimes the practical thing is what matters most Photograph: AFP/Getty Images
News of the World, 2010
So farewell, the News of the World. Some, at least, were sorry to see you go - though most of us can certainly salute last year’s big scoop as three Pakistani cricketers found themselves enmeshed in a betting scandal. Was phone hacking involved? The trio’s lawyers recently asked the police to investigate. No one seemed much bothered at the time, presumably because this was an investigation into corruption. We’ll only know when we have the umpire’s (with wig) verdict this autumn. Will cricket be cleaner as a result? Who can say? But the now dead paper bowled a fine bouncer of a scoop on its way out Photograph: AP
