The Queen’s visit to two London boroughs as part of her Diamond Jubilee tour was marked by local newspapers with a special competition, and souvenir pull-out.

The Ilford Recorder produced a 24-page supplement called ‘happy and glorious’ to mark the Queen’s visit to the town during her first London stop on her jubilee tour.

The paper produced a live blog on the day with reporters tweeting regularly, and published a 24-page full colour supplement containing 90 pictures and 30 stories including first person pieces from readers and 25 vox-pops.

Editor Chris Carter said: “It is without doubt the best supplement we have produced in my 17 years as editor and I know how much appreciated it will be by our readers.

“From the minute we began planning for the visit, my team were enthused and the number of stories they gathered was astonishing.”

Chris was also impressed by the use of social media tools and the role iwitness24 played.

He said: “Storify was a crucial tool for us, as it enabled us to produce a running blog as the day panned out. Besides using the reporters’ tweets Alistair also took tweets from our followers, reporting their comments and posting their pictures.

“We received more than 70 iwitness pictures, many of which we used both on the website and in paper.

“It proves to me that iwitness24 is another vital tool in the armoury of the 21^st Century reporter, along with all forms of social media.

“But without traditional reporting skills and an enthusiastic team of reporters and photographers, the breaking and reporting of stories such as these would not be possible.”       

Meanwhile the Harrow Observer marked Her Royal Highness’’ visit to its patch by running a ‘Design a Jubilee Card’ competition which saw the winner personally hand the card to the Queen.

Seven-year-old Pia Scott-Nair was the winner with a drawing called 1952-2012 With Love From Harrow.

The Observer’s deputy editor Suzy Talbot said: “It was great to be able to give a child in Harrow this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, which will hopefully be a memory Pia treasures forever. She was very excited when we told her and her mother was speechless.

“We ran the competition, supported by Harrow Borough Council and had hundreds of entries – it was great. Initially we were just going to get the winning design presented by a member of the council but the Palace agreed to let us have the winner there to present her own card which was an added bonus.”