Christopher Stevens

With an unfailing ability to pinpoint the details that define a story, combined with a readiness to write about his own deep personal experiences, Christopher Stevens is arguably the most wide-ranging feature writer in British newspapers.

Equally confident when writing about politics or the arts, nostalgia or life-changing trauma, he is trusted by the Mail's readers to be always illuminating, sensitive, entertaining and challenging – qualities amply illustrated by the three entries for this year's award.

The death of much-loved radio DJ Steve Wright in February prompted an excoriating attack on falling standards at Radio 2, which have caused the station to lose millions of listeners.

Less than 18 months before he died, Wrighty was ousted from his natural home, the afternoon slot. 'This has become a pattern at Radio 2,' Stevens wrote, 'with beloved presenters either being shown the door or made to feel so unwelcome that they have little choice but to quit. Not only are their careers damaged or destroyed, but the millions who have grown to love and trust their voices are robbed of something irreplaceable.'

Never ashamed to exploit the emotional power of nostalgia, he celebrated the telly ads of the 1970s and 1980s, while diagnosing why today's commercials are so anodyne and unmemorable: 'The trouble with such rigorous diversity is that, if all the adverts are uniformly diverse, they're all the same. And far from being inclusive, they make most of the population feel outdated, even unwanted. The advertisers seem to be saying, "If you're not inter-racial and intersex, don't bother buying our products, because we're not into you."'

In an unflinching account of the abuse suffered by his disabled son David over many months at a care home in Cardiff, he unleashed a furious condemnation of the institutionalised neglect and cruelty that is far too common across the whole country.

The root cause, he showed, was not only the failure of watchdogs and health professionals to react when abuse is highlighted, but the sheer indifference of the private equity firms that buy up care homes to suck every drop of profit out of them. The result is underpaid care staff, often on less than minimum wage, with no training or interest in the job, overseen by managers whose chief aim is to cut costs to the bone. 'This is a picture of Britain's care crisis,' he wrote, in a spread illustrated by photos he had taken of his son's injuries and living conditions. 'Blood on the walls. Rotting food trodden into the floor. Torn bedding and dirty toilets. Over-flowing bins. Broken furniture. The sound of shrieking and sobbing.'

The anger felt throughout this piece is always controlled but searing, and provoked an outpouring of outrage from Mail readers – many of whom had bitterly similar experiences to relate of residential care for disabled adults in Britain. For Stevens this is a deeply personal crusade but one that resonated widely.