Welcome to my weblog and online portfolio.

What I used to do
Until I resigned and went freelance last year, I was the editor of a website aimed at people who want to become "active citizens".

Funded by Camelot Plc, CitizensConnection.net is one of the biggest sources of online information about citizenship in the UK.

Over two years, working with small teams of journalists, web designers and software developers, I developed, researched, wrote, commissioned, subbed and managed content for the site.

Travelling around the UK, I met and interviewed a broad cross-section of people:

• politicians and business leaders shaping the policies that govern our lives;
• campaigners and protesters struggling to turn the world around;
• ordinary people coping with social and economic changes.

How I became a journalist
I'd always wanted to be a writer.

Just out of university, living on a Greek island, I found myself - when I wasn't picking olives - writing book reviews and articles for the Aegean Weekly, an English-language listings magazine.

I should really have developed this article about a cut-price paradise into a pitch for a reality television show.

After two years, I came back to London and gained a postgrad diploma in journalism.

Since then, I've worked in a variety of media jobs:

• TV researcher
• business reporter
• newspaper editor
• magazine editor
• online editor

Read about my time at East and Tandoori.

My guiding light as a journalist
Whatever the medium, whatever I've been writing about, I've tried to remember that a journalist's job is to:

• report what's happening,
• reveal why it's happening,
• comfort the afflicted,
• flick the comfortable.

No apologies then for my attempts at setting the world to rights. Best way to root out good stories, I think.

hash@imakecontent.com