2024 Winners
Individual awards
Young Journalist of the Year
Svitlana Morenets
The Spectator
Svitlana Morenets, now a much-followed war reporter, came to the UK just over a year ago as a Ukrainian refugee, with English as her second language. Her insider perspective allows her to provide the kind of clear-eyed (not to mention brilliantly-written) insights on the conflict in Ukraine that may elude even the most seasoned foreign...
Business and finance Journalist of the year
Anna Isaac
The Guardian
Anna Isaac’s painstaking investigation of rape, sexual harassment and bullying claims at business lobby group the CBI was fraught with the same journalistic risks and had an equally powerful impact as the earlier #MeToo coverage in The New Yorker and New York Times. Through winning the trust of multiple women, Isaac exposed deep failin...
Foreign Reporter of the Year
Louise Callaghan
Sunday Times
Louise Callaghan’s story about Vitaliy Taktashov, a dead Russian soldier whose battered blue notebook she was given on visiting the Zaporizhzia front lines, was a stark reminder of the victims Vladimir Putin has created on both sides of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Taktashov’s diary depicts a traumatised family man, with no military ex...
Showbiz Reporter of the Year
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Rosamund Urwin and Charlotte Wace
The Times and Sunday Times
Revelling in his reputation as ‘London’s most lascivious lothario’, actor and presenter Russell Brand escaped scrutiny for years. His predatory behaviour was an open secret, but attempts to publicise it were stymied by legal threats and a culture of silence and intimidation within the showbiz world. Sunday Times reporter Rosamund Irwin...
Science And Technology Journalist of the Year
Madhumita Murgia
Financial Times
“Over the past few years, we have taken a gigantic leap forward in our decades-long quest to build intelligent machines: the advent of the large language model, or LLM.” It sounds like the beginning of a storybook – which, in a sense, it is. It is the opening paragraph of Madhumita Murgia’s clear, beautifully written and ambitious visu...
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Health Journalist of the Year
Sarah Neville
Financial Times
Sarah Neville tells complicated, sensitive yet important health stories through a compelling cast of characters. Underpinned by expert interviews and scaffolded by data and leading-edge science, the human beings at the heart of her articles make them accessible and engaging as well as informative – to the extent that readers have been ...
Environment Journalist of the Year
Ben Webster
openDemocracy Ltd
Ben Webster exposed how the gas industry paid a lobbying firm more than £200,000 to set up and run a parliamentary group urging ministers to back new fossil-fuel projects. The All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Hydrogen, comprising 17 MPs and Lords – including some who previously worked for companies that could benefit from the lo...
Travel Journalist of the Year
Chris Leadbeater
The Telegraph
Chris Leadbeater not only conveys a sense of place; he conjures an atmosphere. The reopening of the Old War Office (as a luxury hotel) in London’s Whitehall offered a chance to explore. “Is that a spectral cloud of cigar smoke you smell as you reach the first floor?” asks Leadbeater. “It could be: Winston Churchill strode this way on m...
Data Journalist of the Year
Sondre Ulvund Solstad, PhD
The Economist
The war in Ukraine is the most documented in history, but given the impossibility of stationing reporters in every neighbourhood, the material coming out of the country paints only a partial picture. Sondre Ulvund Solstad attempted to fill this gap with his pioneering ‘war tracker’, which, using data from satellites originally deployed...
The Hugh Mcilvanney Award for Sports Journalist of the Year
Martyn Ziegler
The Times
Martyn Ziegler’s investigation into global organised crime networks controlling the piracy of TV football and other sports will have given many readers pause. “Loads of people do it,” said one interviewee, who knew he was breaking the law by watching an illegal stream, but claimed the cost saving justified it. Ziegler tracked down and ...
Specialist Journalist of the Year
Jessica Hill
Schools Week
Jessica Hill was the first journalist to reveal to the general public how reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC) was ‘a ticking time bomb’ making school buildings ‘liable to collapse’. She brought the scale of the danger to an even wider audience when she persuaded The Guardian to run a feature, based on conversations with struc...
Broadsheet Interviewer of the Year
Decca Aitkenhead
Sunday Times
Combining meticulous research with psychologically astute questioning, Decca Aitkenhead reveals unexpected facets to even the most exhaustively-covered interviewees. Her candid interview with Pamela Anderson, for example, in which she elicited revelations that didn’t even appear in Anderson’s recent warts-and-all memoir, portrayed the ...
Tabloid Interviewer of the Year
Alison Phillips
Daily Mirror
It’s testimony to the skill and empathy of Daily Mirror editor Alison Phillips that in revealing the Alzheimer’s diagnosis of former TV presenter Fiona Phillips she allowed her interviewee’s resilience and humour to shine through without masking her vulnerabilities. “Sometimes I don’t even remember I’ve got it, probably because I’ve go...
Broadsheet Columnist of the Year
Hadley Freeman
Sunday Times
“The first time a man choked me in bed, I assumed I was being murdered.” It’s an arresting opening – and typical of Hadley Freeman, who not only confronts difficult issues head-on but often uses her personal experience to make them relatable to readers. Challenging the apparent ‘normalisation’ of choking among the younger generation, s...
Tabloid Columnist of the Year
Sarah Vine
Daily Mail and The Mail on Sunday
“Britain feels like an absolute shambles, a basket case. Almost nothing works any more, and hasn’t for a while now.” On the day this howl of frustration appeared, Sarah Vine received an email every 10 seconds, and her column was shared 3,500 times on MailOnline alone. Her criticism of London mayor Sadiq Khan and public sector workers a...
Critic of the Year
Laura Cumming
The Observer
Laura Cumming brings artworks to life so that those who may never get to see them can feel they have experienced them. The eyes of Goya’s ‘Black Duchess’ flash, her sash blazes scarlet, “the yellow and gold of her bodice burn like flames,” and Cumming’s suggestion that the subject was the artist’s lover as well as patron is no surprise...
Broadsheet Feature Writer of the Year
Jennifer Williams
Financial Times
The FT’s northern correspondent tells complex stories of national significance through the lens of the political, economic and social reality of life in the region. The issues she tackles may seem unglamorous, but she discusses them with a relish that engages readers and leaders alike.From the heart-rending account of the effects of th...
Tabloid Feature Writer of the Year
News Reporter of the Year
David Conn
The Guardian
David Conn demonstrated stamina, tenacity and courage in his two-year battle to reveal how Tory peer Michelle Mone and her children received £29m as a result of a lucrative contract awarded to PPE Medpro, a company she helped secure a place in the government’s controversial Covid ‘VIP lane’. Mone and her husband, the Isle of Man-based ...
Photographer of the Year
Simon Townsley
The Telegraph
There’s a stillness and poignancy to the photojournalist Simon Townsley’s work that belies the underlying heartbreak. The effect has much to do with light and contrasts. In one example, a father holding his young daughter stands by the grave of his wife, dead to Covid. They are caught in a cold sunlight that also silvers the serried ra...
Sports Photographer of the Year
Tom Jenkins
The Guardian
Tom Jenkins’s photos stand out not least for his unusual camera angles. At the World Cup Final in Qatar, he captured the crowning moment of Lionel Messi’s career by positioning himself behind the goal in front of the celebrating Argentinian fans. When the crowd celebrated, the maestro, clutching the trophy, suddenly materialised, borne...
Cartoonist of the Year
Chris Riddell
The Observer
The phrase ‘A picture is worth a thousand words’ might have been coined for Chris Riddell. His drawing of Dominic Raab, Suella Braverman and Michael Gove in front of a poster declaring ‘You don’t have to be callous, cruel or incompetent to work here, but it helps’, packs a punch. The caricatures are pin sharp, their accessories on poin...
Political Journalist
Team Awards
Investigation of the Year
British Gas
The Times
Posing as a British Gas debt collector, The Times’ head of investigations, Paul Morgan-Bentley, exposed how the company was routinely sending ‘agents’ to break into customers’ homes to fit pay-as-you-go meters, with those known to be extremely vulnerable seen as ‘soft targets’ by agents incentivised with bonuses. It was the winter of 2...
Scoop of the Year
How Crispin Odey Evaded Sexual Assault Allegations for Decades
Financial Times
The FT’s investigation into former City legend Crispin Odey plunged his highly successful hedge fund into crisis. Bankers severed ties with it, investors pulled their money, and Odey – friend of prime ministers and City grandees and worth an estimated £800m – was expelled. Within five months Odey Asset Management closed down.The implos...
News Website of the Year
The Telegraph
From the war in Ukraine to the rewriting of Roald Dahl, subscribers to The Telegraph’s online edition could immerse themselves in agenda-setting exclusives and ground-breaking visual storytelling. The forensic investigation into leaked WhatsApp messages between the Health Secretary, ministers and advisers, shed new light on how Covid d...
News Podcast of the Year
The Trial of Lucy Letby
Daily Mail
“Trust me, I’m a nurse.” To their cost, the parents of seven dead babies and six with life-changing injuries took neo-natal nurse Lucy Letby, the most prolific serial child-killer in UK history, at her word. Letby’s trial lasted over 10 months and Liz Hull, the Daily Mail’s northern correspondent, alongside journalist and broadcaster C...
News App of the Year
FT Edit
Financial Times
FT Edit – a “daily dose of fresh perspectives” – is the FT’s response to overwhelmed readers’ requests for a curated offering. Eight daily articles – a mix of analysis, longer reads, opinion and FT Weekend pieces – are presented simply and ad-free to facilitate easy navigation and focused reading.The objective – to woo back people who ...
Supplement of the Year
FT Magazine
Financial Times
Over the past year, FT Weekend Magazine has grown its audience, deepened engagement and produced ever more ambitious journalism. In particular, the team has focused on impact and innovation, cementing the magazine’s status as a world-class home for powerful reporting and literary journalism.A highlight was the Crispin Odey investigatio...
Broadsheet Front Page of the Year
The Lockdown Files
The Telegraph
It’s a striking photograph: former health minister Matt Hancock, in profile, mouth open, lit from the front, looking for all the world like a rabbit caught in the headlights of the damning words alongside the image: “Hancock rejected Whitty’s advice on care home tests.”The powerful banner was followed by two blue WhatsApp-style ticks s...
Tabloid Front Page of the Year
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War on Israel
Mail on Sunday
‘Don’t kill me!’ screamed The Mail on Sunday’s chilling front-page headline on October 8th, the day after waves of Hamas gunmen stormed across Gaza’s border into Israel, killing some 1,200 people, including 364 at the music festival attended by Noa Argamani, the 25-year-old in the photograph beneath the headline.The now-iconic shot cap...
Campaign of the Year
Clean It Up Campaign
The Times
The Times launched its Clean It Up Campaign with the revelation that water companies could escape big fines for spilling sewage into rivers and seas because then environment secretary Thérèse Coffey thought they were ‘disproportionate’. In addition to the main front-page headline story, a manifesto set out realistic but impactful goals...
Excellence in Diversity Award
Cotton Capital
The Guardian
“I felt sick to my stomach,” wrote The Guardian’s editor-in-chief Katharine Viner in an editorial last March. She was recalling the day she met the historians commissioned by The Guardian’s owner, The Scott Trust, to look into the newspaper’s past, inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement. “The evidence was inescapable: there was no...