It’s not often a free, local newspaper finds itself at the heart of one of the biggest stories on the news agenda.

And yesterday - during the Glasgow North-east by-election - Local News Glasgow was managing to more than keep pace with any news updates appearing on the websites of their much bigger media rivals.

Reporters, Erik Geddes and Martin Graham, were filing copy from the count and - while other websites were still saying the likes of ‘voting still continuing’ - they were able to forecast that Labour's Willie Bain would gain the seat (they were also predicting the BNP would finish third, which they narrowly failed to do).

Erik is a journalism graduate of Cardonald College, during which time he won the Right Stuff Student Scoop of the Year award and the Right Stuff College News of the Year award. He's now doing honours at Glasgow Caledonian University, while Martin is studying for a Masters and NCTJ qualification at Caledonian too.

Says Local News Glasgow editor, Grace Franklin: 'I'm really proud of what Erik and Martin have delivered throughout the night. They've proved that technology helps redress the balance in the David and Goliath battle between independent papers like ours and the multinational media. But you still need to be on the spot to get the news right and at the right time.”