Red Top: Being a Reporter - Ethically, Legally and with Panache

By Bill Coles

Red Top has everything an aspiring reporter needs to know about newspaper journalism. Written in easily digestible bite-size chapters, the book is packed with extraordinary stories that explain what it’s really like to be a front-line reporter.

Included is a full breakdown on the two key skills of how to interview and how to dig up exclusives. Plus tips on dealing with the mad-masters, the editors; writing a news story; and what the hell to do when a libel writ comes thudding onto your desk.

Bill Coles has been a journalist for 25 years and was The Sun’s New York Correspondent, Political Correspondent and Royal Reporter. He has written for a huge variety of papers from The Wall Street Journal to the Mail, the Scotsman and Prima Baby Magazine.

He has also covered some of the world’s biggest news stories – as well as some of the most bizarre –

- Bill Clinton’s year-long sex scandal with his intern Monica Lewinsky.
- The Boston murder trial of the British nanny Louise Woodward (with five Sun front pages in a row).
- Buying $10,000 of lottery tickets in Miami
- A blind-date with Ivana Trump – in a stretch limo.
- Becoming one of Company magazine’s Bachelors of the Year.
- Flying from New York to the Inca trail in Peru – to eat a giant guinea-pig.
- Posing naked for a Sun centrefold - with nothing but a copy of The Sun to hide his modesty.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Legend Press
• Release date: Jul 1, 2013
• ISBN: 9781909395787

Bill Coles

Bill Coles has been a journalist for 25 years and was the New York Correspondent, Political Correspondent and Royal Reporter on The Sun. He has written for a wide variety of papers and magazines ranging from The Wall Street Journal to The Mail, The Scotsman and Prima Baby Magazine. For the past five years, he has been a tabloid consultant with South Africa’s biggest newspaper group, Media 24, as well as The Herald Group in Glasgow and DC Thomson in Dundee.