Richard Horton, a detective constable at Lancashire police, won the Orwell Prize in 2009 for his anonymous blog Night Jack, about life in the police force.

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It was published last year in Britain (but only this month in the United States) and recently won the Orwell prize, an award for political writing.

ECONOMIST: A sad and beautiful account of a much changed landscape

But some like Muckety, an American site which enriches news stories with interactive maps of the protagonists' networks of influence, and NightJack, the revealing and depressing blog of an anonymous British policeman, which won the Orwell prize last month enhance society's understanding of itself, and could not have existed in the old world.

ECONOMIST: Media