Jacob Jarvis

The story 

An ambulance crew were criticised for stopping to get food to fuel them through a shift.

Loughborough-based paramedic Tim Hargreaves and ambulance technician Kiri Howard went for some much-needed sustenance during a 10-hour stint, at around 8pm yesterday.

As they picked up some chips, someone in the shop said: “I had to wait for an ambulance, nice you have time to eat.”

Speaking to the Mercury, Tim said: “It was an off the cuff comment, which we overheard. It was clearly directed at us and we thought, ‘that’s not very nice’. We’d been going for six hours without a break.”

To read the full story, click here. 

How I got the story 

On a quiet Sunday shift I was looking around for leads when I came across a tweet from Tim Hargreaves, saying he and a colleague had been criticised while getting food on a shift.

I had written a previous story on a similar incident, where a police officer was accused of “wasting tax payers’ money” for buying food while in uniform. This got 10,477 page views.

I think it is important to notice trends in news gathering, so saw this as both a worthy issue to write about and also a story which would reach a large audience.

I immediately followed Tim on Twitter and sent him a message asking to talk, we had a conversation and I put this story together.

It received 17,253 page views on our site and also received a lot of response on social media, with 2 minute 59 seconds average engagement time.

The story was then used by the online by the Mirror, the Sun, the Express, Metro, the Daily Mail and LADbible.

It was also used by numerous regional websites including Coventry Live, Birmingham Live and the Nottingham Post.

I since did another similar story, which made a front page in print and also did well online, after a paramedic was sworn at and called an idiot while helping someone.

More recently I sourced a similar story about a paramedic being sworn at and called an idiot while helping someone into an ambulance, which made a front page in print and got just shy of 4,000 page views in a day.

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