Journalists are cramming into Ipswich Crown Court for the trial of Steve Wright, who is charged with killing five women in the area last year.
Because of the large number of journalists covering the trial, they were required to collect tickets for the courtroom or an annex where the trial could be watched by videolink.
The Evening Star’s Grant Sherlock spotted journalists from various corners of the globe on his Ipswich patch today.
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“Sky News took the biscuit though, having displayed impressive planning by organising the construction of a special platform on the roof of the nearby Berkeley Business Centre – a position which gave an unrivalled view over the media circus below,” Sherlock reports.
Wright entered not guilty pleas on each of the five murder counts in May last year as the trial began yesterday.
The Star and its Archant stablemate, the East Anglian Daily Times, have joined forces to produce in-depth online coverage of the trial.
A special subsection running on both EveningStar24 and EADT24 provides links to background information on the key figures, an interactive timeline of events, and a Google Maps mashup showing key locations referred to in the case.
“For the first day the trial-related material recorded more than 22k page impressions across the two sites, which represents about a quarter of a normal day’s traffic,” web editor James Goffin wrote in an e-mail.
The sites are being updated directly from the courthouse, where journalists are filing directly to the web site using a 3G modem.
“Given our local audience we’re having to tread a particular careful line in terms of ensuring we don’t prejudice the trial,” wrote Goffin.
Yesterday, the judge in the case warned jurors to ignore media reports of the case.
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