A bet-winning penguin costume and a ranting editor are just two highlights from one regional hack's first decade at a north-east daily.

Graeme Whitfield, Northumberland editor at The Journal in Newcastle, marked the 10th anniversary of his first day with a bottle of champagne from colleagues and a "Top 10 Journal Moments" entry on his blog.

He recalled how in his first week he wrote a story about a factory in Sudan bombed by Americas because they thought it was making chemical weapons.

But in fact The Journal discovered it wasn't capable of such feats after receiving a phone call from a man living in nearby Hexham who had built the factory.

"The story was picked up by just about every newspaper and TV news channel in the world," Graeme said.

"Things could only go downhill from there but I'm still proud of a lot of the stories I've done since then: exposing a convicted sex offender who'd been working in a number of schools in the North East and a series of articles about low flying RAF jets that probably led to safety improvements at Newcastle Airport."

Graeme's Top 10 moments, as reported on his blog, are:

1. Spending a day at worked dressed up in a penguin costume to win a bet.

2. A former news editor getting so frustrated that he picked up his computer, threw it onto the ground and then kicked the hell out of it.

3. Our old editor coming out of his office, looking at the big screen TVs we had just installed to keep track of rolling news channels and saying: "Can someone tell me why the Chronicle is watching News 24 and we've got Scooby f****** Doo on?"

4. The same editor going slightly mental when he spent lots of money to send a reporter to Rhodes to cover a court case and it was then adjourned straight away.

5. Walking through the Bigg Market and shouting: "Why the hell should I have to go and interview Paul bloody Boateng?" only for the then Cabinet Minister to come round the corner and look all embarrassed.

6. An overly keen reporter getting told off for running across the Metro lines while doing a vox pop. His explanation – "he was getting away" – didn't really cut it.

7. Perfecting my best Oscar-loser face when I got beaten to four separate prizes – count 'em! – at last year's North East Press Awards.

8. Listening to (Journal environment editor) Tony Henderson's stories.

9. Picking up the phone to have someone say: "Hello Graeme, it's John Prescott here." It was too. I interviewed for him for about 20 minutes then looked back over my notes and found I barely had a full sentence in my notebook.

10. Getting Gary Barlow to look sheepish when I asked him what he knew about Hospice Week 1998. His answer was that he didn't know very much at all, which was unfortunate as he was supposed to be its patron.

Graeme added: "The question I'm asking myself now is whether I'll still be here in another ten years. There's not many people left at The Journal from when I started.

"It's not even beyond the realms of possibility that there won't be a Journal for me to work at in 2018.

"These are bad times for newspapers as the economic slow-down hits advertising and circulation of just about every newspaper continues to fall.

"I happen to think that The Journal will survive and that, whatever happens, people will still need news in some form."