Rioting across England spread on to the territories of some of the country’s big daily titles last night.
The Manchester Evening News, which had some of the biggest disturbances on its patch, also had by far the most impressive coverage.
It has set up a live blog using CoveritLive pulling together all their own coverage as well as comments and Tweets from readers and from Manchester Police, and the impressively quick-off-the-mark RiotCleanUpManc group. The blog is embedded on the MEN homepage.
By first thing this morning the MEN already had a more polished news report up looking back at how “How the two proud cities of Manchester and Salford descended into violence and mayhem” in the space of just a couple of hours last night.
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Last night the MEN had a 16-strong team of reporters and photographers on the streets of Salford and Manchester to cover events as they unfolded.
They included several videos include this footage of looting at the Arndale Centre:
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The Wolverhampton Express and Star will have saved its most comprehensive coverage for the print edition (the UK’s top-selling regional daily tends not to give away all its content online).
It carried video reports of unrest in West Bromwich and Birmingham supplied by ITN. It also had its own picture galleries showing violence in West Bromwich, Birmingham and Wolverhampton.
The Express and Star also captured its own video reports of violence in Wolverhampton.
The Birmingham Mail (which like the MEN is owned by Trinity Mirror) also used a CoverItLive blog embedded on its homepage to pull together news reports, comments and information from other sources.
It had probably the biggest riot-related story to-date, news that three men had been run over and killed apparently protecting a Mosque – which it broke at 9.18am this morning.
The independently run BirminghamRiots2011 blog has also been doing a good job of pulling together reports using Tumblr.
The Birmingham Post also put together its own more polished and edited TV news style report of the night.
In this text report, accompanied by some dramatic photos, reporter Mark Cowan revealed how:
A large crowd of masked thugs, at least 200 strong, chanted and charged at police lines before trying to smash their way into the prestigious shopping centre, their way barred by giant metal fencing that had been chained to stations to block their way. A series of baton charges forced them away.
The independently-run Salford Star described unrest there as “a very Salford riot” which involved around 300 people looting Lidl, The Money Shop and Bargain Booze among other shops.
This was more of a party than an angry riot as youngsters handed old people packs of cigs, and tins of Carlsberg freshly liberated from LIDL which is situated across the road from Salford Precinct and less than a stones throw away from the Urban Splash Chimney Pot Park upside down houses.
Its report was accompanied by a quote from Karl Marx’s friend Frederick Engels: “A man does not steal what he already has.”
The Liverpool Post used a mixture of news reports and photo slideshows to tell the story of clashes between around 200 youths and police in the city.
The Northcliffe-owned Nottingham Post had to use the somewhat baffling This Is Nottingham website to get their news across. Northcliffe does not give its newspapers websites, but instead has opted for a series of centrally-run “This Is” portals which have recently had a redesign.
This is Nottingam had plenty of news reports about a night which saw 1,000 incidents in the city, it reported, including the firebombing of a police station. But there was no video and few photos.
Northcliffe’s two Gloucestershire dailies – The Echo and Citizen – also use the This Is Gloucestershire site for their online output.
The only reports I could find from them about the frankly amazing news that civil disorder had spread to the cathedral town on the Welsh border were this leader comment and this slideshow provided by “Deliss Photography”.
There appeared to be a better online report of looting involving 50 youths in Gloucester town centre in The Guardian this morning.
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