Millie Bowles

Despite being just over two years into her journalism career – and with no former experience or qualifications in the industry – Millie Bowles undoubtedly has both a good nose for a story and a true reporter’s instinct. 

This was especially evident when securing an interview with former Russian oligarch Ilya Yurov and his wife Nataliya, who Bowles noticed were selling their mansion in Kent. With her audience front of mind, she used the interview to ask questions that would resonate with local readers, and judges noted that this approach meant the subjects revealed personal insight they perhaps would not have disclosed elsewhere. The approach paid off, with the article gaining more than 30,000 page views on the Kent Online website and a dwell time of more than two minutes.

Judges also congratulated Bowles for securing an interview with actor and star of the Netflix show Top Boy, Ashley Walters, which Bowles said she managed to “snatch” with a “humble knock at the door”. Featuring Walters and his battle for planning permission to build an extension, it helped to turn an otherwise dry planning story into a worthy read, judges said, and humanised the subject in the process. The article gained almost 70,000 page views.