Jessica Best - Journalist

Planning issues are a big focus for yourCardiff, and often generate some of the most passionate debate in the comments, and on Twitter and Facebook. I have developed monthly planning maps, mapping all the planning applications set to go before Cardiff Council’s planning committee each month. I live-Tweet from the meetings, and then map the subsequent decisions. We also keep an eye on applications as they go into the council, and this story - about plans to build a new winter sports complex and Wales’ tallest building in Cardiff Bay - also made it on the front of the South Wales Echo.

Over the summer, I decided to overhaul the design of yourCardiff to give it a fresher, cleaner look and make the various sections easier to navigate. With the help of Media Wales’ web developer Andrew Wilcox, the new design launched at the end of June, with a “story carousel” leading the site with up to five top stories, and news sections which we knew to be the most popular including crime, community, council, events, and photography.

In the run up to May’s council elections, I developed a special section on yourCardiff for features on election issues, the latest news from each parties’ campaign, analysis of what the vote could mean for Cardiff, and live blogs of various candidates’ debates and hustings events. On the day of the vote, I co-ordinated an election day live blog which ran through the night, with myself and three other reporters feeding in the results as they came in from the four counts across the city. I also produced a live a results map, which showed the changing political landscape in real time as each ward was declared. The election night live blog accounted for 3% of all Trinity Mirror’s online traffic on the night of May 3/4.

In the first few weeks of my role running yourCardiff, I was briefed by Cardiff Council’s executive member for housing about proposals to build hundreds of new homes in Cardiff as part of the city council’s largest house building scheme for decades. I produced the story for online - including an interactive map of all the proposed locations for the new housing - and it also made the front page of the South Wales Echo.

In March 2012, I took up a new role as an online journalist with Media Wales - Trinity Mirror’s regional centre in Cardiff, from where the Western Mail, South Wales Echo and Wales On Sunday newspapers are produced, and where the daily news website covering all three titles, WalesOnline, is based. My role here is as editor of WalesOnline’s daily community news website for the Welsh capital, yourCardiff. I am solely responsible for running and developing the website, writing and producing multi-media content, as well as commissioning, co-ordinating and editing content from other newsroom reporters and external contributors. I also run yourCardiff’s social media presences, including its Twitter account, Facebook page, and Flickr group. When required, I also write and/or edit content for the main WalesOnline site, and where appropriate, stories I produce for yourCardiff and WalesOnline are also reverse-published in the South Wales Echo, Western Mail or Wales On Sunday.

Twelve-year-old Harris Mann was shot in the eye with an airgun as he walked to see a friend. An 18-year-old man admitted GBH, and after his mother made contact with the Argus, I went to the hospital to interview her about her son’s ordeal. Harris faces losing his sight and the eyeball in his left eye. Read the full interview here.

In March 2010, the body of a newborn baby was abandoned outside a corner shop in Cwmcarn. I covered the story from the first police calls we had about the tragic discovery, and throughout the following days as the shock reverberated around the small Valleys community. I also found the heartbreaking story of the shop workers who tried to save the baby boy. Read about the police appeal to the mother here, the shop workers’ efforts here, and the effect it had on people in the village here.

We had been following the prosecution of former Monmouth theatre boss Victor Bignell for sharing indecent images of children for some time. But at the sentencing it was revealed Bignell was caught through a Canadian police investigation, and compared his offence to speeding. He was jailed for two years. Read my court report here.