The Times

Reference from the Times' Investigations Editor


Girish Gupta spent a week working with me at The Times assisting with investigations and news articles in the Home News Room.

Girish will certainly be a successful reporter. He has all the enthusiasm, intelligence, personality and flair which the job requires. He quickly built up effective working relationships with the other reporters and the editors on The Times. While he was here, a major story broke about a cloud of volcanic ash from Iceland which brought flights to a halt across Europe. We asked him to join our team covering this breaking story and he was so successful that his report was used as the live lead piece on the TimesOnline website. We were impressed in particular by his speed and accuracy.



Girish assisted me with some research for an ongoing investigation into a suspicious business transaction in Spain, possibly involving a major British criminal. Girish showed patience and thoroughness in going through company documents and records, providing clues to the businessman's identity. This type of task requires attention to detail and an alert mind.



He also discussed with me the progress of an investigation he had done for his student paper into crimes against students in Manchester. This was a remarkable piece of work for a student publication. We looked at ways to refine his Freedom of Information requests to seek further details and clarifications. The police force were finally provoked into issuing a high-level response to the embarrassing findings. It was a great initiative which paid off with a good, well written, provocative story.

I would keenly recommend him for a post as a journalist.