Sunday Times

In its 200th year, the Sunday Times landed a number of major exclusives. The exposure of Russell Brand (in collaboration with The Times and Channel 4) as an alleged serial abuser was one of the paper’s best-performing stories of all time, and triggered police enquiries and internal reviews at his former employers the BBC and Channel 4. 

Christina Lamb’s heartbreaking dispatch about Vladimir Putin’s policy of seizing Ukrainian children and sending them to Russia for ‘re-education’ prompted an International Criminal Court arrest warrant for the dictator. Reporting the allegations of whistleblowers about financial wrongdoing at HS2 Ltd, the non-departmental body created to run the line, also triggered an enquiry. And Louise Callaghan’s visceral account of refugees in Congo murdered or displaced by Rwanda-backed rebels was a wake-up call about the terrible truth of the regime and its proxies. 

There were others – but the paper isn’t just about hard news. Indeed, it is “chock-full of high-quality writers and reporters,” said the judges, who praised its “magnificent foreign coverage, unmissable political coverage, superb comment and analysis, and thoughtful and intelligent sport reporting.” But the sheer number of major stories it has broken “is deserving of an award on its own,” they concluded.