A city news website has had more 300,000 visits after an overheard conversation on a bus prompted it to break news about the coronavirus on its patch.
Brighton & Hove News received the online boost after revealing a medical centre had been closed after a doctor who worked there was diagnosed.
The News also subsequently revealed Dr Catriona Greenwood, the GP in question, had not seen any patients during her most recent visit because she had been working an “admin” day at the surgery – a fact which had not been revealed by the NHS.
Co-editor Jo Wadsworth told HTFP traffic has surged so much that the site had to pay for four times as much bandwidth to cope.
Jo, pictured, said: “We broke the news about the closure of the medical centre when someone sent me a message via social media about a conversation he’d overheard on the bus – the perfect mix of old-fashioned and new fangled local journalism, but with good contacts at its core.
“Since then, we’ve been able to combat the wall of silence from local health authorities thanks to contacts my colleague Frank has built up through years of sitting through dreary NHS meetings.
“And it was one of those contacts who was able to give us the unauthorised briefing that Dr Greenwood had not seen any patients – a piece of information which helped calm the situation and should really have come promptly and officially from the NHS itself.
“As long-standing members of the community ourselves, we know how important it is not to spread panic, and we’ve striven to keep the people at the centre of this story in mind. This has paid off with some of the most rewarding feedback we’ve received in the ten plus years the site has now been going.”