The Sunday Times

‘End this bloody disgrace’ shouts the front-page headline, the call to action amplified by the red font in the last two words. The Sunday Times’s campaign to win compensation for victims of the infected blood scandal was led by political editor Caroline Wheeler, the culmination of a 23-year crusade. A few months later the first payments were made to families. It was the highlight in a year of highlights for the paper, which broke a succession of major stories, from Sir Chris Hoy’s terminal cancer diagnosis, to the Labour ‘freebiegate’ scandal, to Christina Lamb’s almost impossible-to-read reports of the rape of Israeli hostages by Hamas terrorists.

But it wasn’t all grim reading. Style magazine celebrated its 30th anniversary with a star-studded gala evening and four different Kylie covers, and a fascinating story about the ultimate ‘trad wife’ Hannah Nedelman, beautiful Utah mother of eight children under 12 – “a devout Mormon who… bakes perfectly scored sourdough loaves, milks cows straight into her coffee cup and gives birth by candlelight with no pain relief” – went viral, generating thousands of new subscribers. “Informative and entertaining journalism from cover to cover… excelling from both a print and online perspective,” concluded the judges.