Have you ever wondered how a seemingly non-story ends up in the national news? This might give you a valuable insight.

For those of you who don’t know, I’m a huge Wolves fan and avidly read a fans’ forum called The Wolf.

Earlier this week under the header God is a Wolves Fan one supporter posted a picture which showed a break in cloud formation depicting the iconic wolf’s head symbol of the club. It made me smile when I saw it.

However, a number of other Wolves fans commented on it and one bright spark even suggested sending it to the local evening newspaper. Now I don’t know whether the snapper did actually send it to the paper or not but what I’m also certain of is that reporters on the Express & Star keep a close eye on The Wolf, other messageboards and social media sites (the picture also went viral on platforms such as Facebook and Twitter) to constantly gauge the mood of the Wolves faithful.

So whichever way it arrived, the picture came under the noses of local reporters and resulted in a news story which appeared in last night’s Express & Star.

Now, in the same way that local reporters keep an eye on football fan messageboards, journalists on national newspapers keep an eye on stories in local newspapers. And when the wolf head story appeared last night, it clearly tickled someone on commuters’ favourite paper, the Metro who picked up and ran with the story and it subsequently appeared this morning. It was also reported on the BBC’s Football gossip column.

Like a lot of other industries there is a supply chain of news which can often start from very humble beginnings, and when Luke Fellows took a quick snap on his phone I bet he didn’t in his wildest dreams expect to wake up this morning to read about himself in the national news.

It just goes to show how important local and regional news still is.