NightJack: When the blogging biter's bit (Telegraph)

**Drew Wilson** · June 18th, 2009, 07:29 PM

In April, an anonymous police blog written by a detective calling himself "NightJack" won the Orwell Prize for online political writing. And it deserved to, wrote one newspaper, "because it took you inside real life in a way you couldn't go by yourself".

But now you can't go inside real life with NightJack. Visit the site, and you read: "The authors have deleted this blog. The content is no longer available." Thishas been taken down in its entirety because the Lancashire detective lost a court case to stop his identity being revealed by The Times - the very paper that praised him to the skies when he won the Orwell Prize.

NightJack is Richard Horton, a detective of Lancashire Constabulary. Yesterday, he revealed how the paper had planned to end his anonymity. "One morning I heard a rumour that they had sent a photographer to my home. Later in the afternoon came the inevitable phone calls, first to me and then to Lancashire Constabulary asking for confirmation that I was the author of the NightJack blog.

"That was easily the worst afternoon of my life. I knew that it was serious and quite rightly my employers have investigated it as a matter of misconduct. With that under way, I went to court to stop The Times from publishing my name, my photograph or any personal details about my home and my family. Over the years, I have dealt with some unpleasant characters. I know that some of them have made determined but unsuccessful efforts to find me…

More...

I suspect this is some seriously appaulling conduct by the reporter who outted him. Unfortunately, I don't know anything about NightJack outside of this. Regardless, I think bloggers deserve to choose to be anonymous. In some cases, their life depends on it.