This was one of the very first inquests I attended and it was one of an incident that occurred before the launch of our news site. It involved the death of Charlie Turner, who was killed in a car accident on a country lane in Norfolk back in 2020.

We always make a list of key inquests that are coming up in the future so we can make plans on how to provide the best coverage for our readers and also work out who will be available to attend on the day. For this particular case, I saw it whilst scrolling on the Norfolk County Council coroner’s hearing list a few days before the full hearing commenced and after doing some background research on the crash and the people involved, I pitched to my editors the idea of attending the full hearing, which was due to take place at the beginning of 2022.

Although Charlie’s passing was incredibly sad news, it is also hugely important to report on inquest proceedings and deaths in the community that create public interest. Whilst there was also the option of going to the inquest via dial-in, I made the decision to attend the full inquest hearing in person at County Hall in Norwich as I felt I would get more out of it on the day.

A number of other rival news sites were also planning to cover the story, so I needed to make sure I was alert and ready to make sure our coverage was published first and the one that people would be more likely to click on. Due to the fact that it was an inquest, I had to ensure that my copy was sensitively written.

Furthermore, as inquests are within the public domain and is an open court, we were permitted to report the evidence and the facts of the case that were mentioned in court, which we were able to do fairly, accurately and contemporaneously. Once the inquest was concluded, I wrote the story from the notes I had taken down.

It was heard that he, a driver and another passenger had travelled to Lynn to purchase cans of nitrous oxide and that Mr. Turner had been the rear seat passenger when the crash happened. All of this was important information that I made sure to get into the article, along with the cause of death as well as the coroner’s final words.

The piece of the full inquest hearing had a high engagement time of over two minutes according to HiveAlpha. Many people in the comments on social media also left tributes, showing how much of an impact the story had on our readers.