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November 5, 2019updated 07 Nov 2023 5:41am

British Journalism Awards 2019 finalists revealed: ‘Bravery is the quality that shines through’

By Press Gazette

After three weeks of deliberations involving 60 judges and 560 entries, Press Gazette is proud to announce the finalists for the 2019 British Journalism Awards.

Every major UK journalism organisation has submitted entries to this year’s awards.

The judges were chosen for their independence and expertise and objectively judged entries against the following criteria:

• Was the work revelatory?
• Did it show journalistic skill and rigour?
• Did it serve the public interest?

The shortlists were finalised during two days of jury deliberations where the entries were discussed and judges sought to reach a consensus.

Since its launch in 2011 the British Journalism Awards has been set apart from other events by two factors: this event is open to all journalists writing for a British audience regardless of the platform AND it recognises great journalism which is both interesting to the public and in the public interest.

  • Book your tickets for the British Journalism Awards 2019

Chairman of the judges and Press Gazette editor-in-chief Dominic Ponsford said: “Because our entry criteria is so strict publications really do only enter their best work, making the job of the judges particularly hard.

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“With only about 20 per cent of entries making it to the shortlists, being a finalist at the British Journalism Awards is a superb achievement in itself.

“One quality shines through all the shortlists: bravery. Again and again journalists have pitted themselves against powerful vested interests to provide a voice for the voiceless and shine a light into the murkiest areas of Britain and the wider world.

“In these days of social media hate mobs it takes courage and a cast-iron skin for a journalist to expose pretty much any uncomfortable truths. In many cases the British Journalism Awards finalists have placed themselves in physical danger in order to report the news.

“Press Gazette thanks and salutes all this year’s entrants and finalists.”

The winners of the 2019 British Journalism Awards will be announced at the awards dinner which is being held on 10 December at the Hilton Bankside in London. Click here to book tickets.

The shortlist for News Provider of the Year has yet to be announced. There are no shortlists for Journalist of the Year, sponsored by Camelot, and the Marie Colvin Award – the winners of both will be announced on the night.

Uber is the exclusive headline sponsor for the 2019 BJAs.

The finalists for the 2019 British Journalism Awards are:

Arts and Entertainment

Grant Tucker – The Sunday Times:

Oliver Wainwright – Guardian News & Media:

Heloise Wood – The Bookseller:

Tom Bryant – Daily Mirror:

Ian Youngs – BBC News website:

Mark Brown – Guardian News & Media:

Business and Economics Journalism, sponsored by Starling Bank

John Detrixhe – Quartz:

Gavin Finch – Bloomberg Business Week:

Gareth Davies – The Bureau of Investigative Journalism:

Owen Walker, Peter Smith, Kadhim Shubber, Robert Smith, Patrick Jenkins and Kate Beioley – Financial Times:

Rob Davies – Guardian News & Media:

Ruth Sunderland – Daily Mail:

Simon Goodley – The Guardian:

Tim Bradshaw – Financial Times:

Campaign of the Year, sponsored by Uber

Duty of care The Telegraph (Paul Nuki, Charles Hymas and team)

Dying homeless The Bureau of Investigative Journalism (Maeve McClenaghan and Charles Boutaud)

End this injusticeDaily Express (Liz Perkins)

Join the hospital help forceDaily Mail (Kate Pickles)

Normandy memorialDaily Mail (Robert Hardman)

Segregated playgroundsGuardian News & Media (Harriet Grant, Aamna Mohdin and Chris Michael)

Helen’s lawDaily Mirror (Fiona Duffy and Louie Smith)

Locked up for being autisticMail on Sunday (Ian Birrell)

Comment Journalism

Adrian Wooldridge – The Economist:

Alex Brummer – Daily Mail:

Brian Reade – Daily Mirror:

Dominic Lawson – The Sunday Times:

Ian Birrell – The i:

The care system remains twisted
Serious contender for serious times

Marina Hyde – Guardian News & Media:

Clare Dwyer Hogg – Financial Times:

Nesrine Malik – Guardian News & Media:

Tom Peck – The Independent:

Anna Moore – Guardian News & Media:

Stephen Wright – Daily Mail:

Tom Harper – The Sunday Times:

Tom Pettifor – Daily Mirror:

Steve Swann, Thomas Mackintosh, Tom Symonds, Danny Shaw, Wesley Stephenson, Jodi Law and David Brown- BBC News:

Franz Wild – Bloomberg News:

Brooke Johnston and Sue Mitchell – BBC Radio 4:

Alon Aviram, Michael Gillard, Will Franklin, Matt Woodman and Adam Cantwell-Corn – Bristol Cable:

Features Journalism

Aasma Day – HuffPost UK:

Grace Macaskill – Sunday Mirror:

Henry Mance – Financial Times:

Chris Cook – Tortoise:

Anushka Asthana, Robert Booth, Joshua Kelly and the Today in Focus team – Guardian News & Media:

Cherry Wilson – BBC Newsbeat:

Simon Hattenstone and Daniel Lavelle – Guardian News & Media:

Sophie Elmhirst – The Economist 1843 magazine:

Foreign Affairs Journalism, sponsored by The Investigative Journal:

Tom Wilson, David Pilling and David Blood – Financial Times:

How Joseph Kabila lost then won Congo’s election
Congo voting data reveal huge fraud in poll to replace Kabila

Robin Barnwell – ITV Exposure/Hardcash Productions:

Jean Mackenzie and Hayley Valentine – The Nine/BBC Scotland:

Anthony Loyd – The Times:

Louise Callaghan – The Sunday Times:

Josie Ensor – The Telegraph:

Edward Luce – Financial Times:

Tom Phillips – Guardian News & Media:

John McDermott – The Economist:

Health and Life Sciences Journalism sponsored by EY:

Andrew Gregory – The Sunday Times:

Ben Spencer – Daily Mail:

Faye Kirkland – BBC:

Ian Birrell – The Mail on Sunday:

Deborah Cohen – BBC Newsnight:

Miki Mistrati, Antony Barnett, Jo Burge, Adam Vandermark,
Peter Hirst and Oliver Smith – Channel 4 Dispatches:

Nicholas Carding, Russell Scott, Shaun Lintern, James Illman and
Ben Clover – Health Service Journal:

Lilah Raptopoulos and James Fontanella-Khan – Financial Times:

Innovation, sponsored by Google News Initiative

Brexit: A Cry from the Irish Border Financial Times (Juliet Riddell,
Tom Hannen, Clare Dwyer Hogg and Stephen Rea)

Britain TalksDaily Mirror (Ros Wynne-Jones,
Claire Donnelly, Ann Gripper, Helen Harper, Fran Goodman and
Maryam Qaiser)

Creative Producers newsroom innovations- Financial Times (Robin Kwong and Claire Manibog):

The internet, but not as we know it: life online in China, Cuba, India and RussiaGuardian News & Media

ThinkInTortoise (James Harding, Merope Mills, Ceri Thomas, Polly Curtis and Matthew D’Ancona)

Women’s sport The Telegraph

Interviewer of the Year

Decca Aitkenhead – The Sunday Times

Eddie Mair – LBC

Hadley Freeman – The Guardian

Helen Carroll – Daily Mail

Patrick Hill – Sunday Mirror

Victoria Derbyshire – BBC

Investigation, sponsored by Transparency International UK

Action fraudThe Times (Paul Morgan-Bentley)

Bet365 undercoverDaily Mail (Tom Payne)

Britain’s Hidden Children’s HomesBBC Newsnight (Katie Razzall, Sally Chesworth, Innes Bowen, Luke Winsbury, Daniel Clarke, Esme Wren and Laura Lea)

Is Labour anti-Semitic?BBC Panorama (John Ware, Leo Telling, Neil Grant and Rachel Jupp)

Bad boy of BrexitOpen Democracy (Peter Geoghegan and Jenna Corderoy)

Britain’s #Metoo Scandal – The Telegraph (Claire Newell and the Telegraph investigation team)

The Prime Minister and the American businesswomanThe Sunday Times (Jonathan Calvert, George Arbuthnott and Gabriel Pogrund)

The sex drug that killsBuzzfeed UK and Channel 4 Dispatches (Patrick Strudwick)

Undercover: Inside China’s Digital GulagITV Exposure/Hardcash Productions (Robin Barnwell)

Local Journalism

Rodney Edwards – The Impartial Reporter:

Adam Cantwell-Corn, Matt Woodman, Will Franklin and Alon Aviram – Bristol Cable:

David Thompson, Stephen Nolan, Ross Carson and Mary McKeagney – BBC Nolan Show:

Julian Sturdy, Kafui Okpattah, Debbie Tubby and Chris Sharman – BBC East Impact Hub:

Phil Coleman – News & Star (Carlisle):

Hayley Mortimer and Mark Cummings – BBC Radio Gloucestershire:

  • Fabricated or Induced Illness

Elaine Forrester, Lyndsey Telford, Gwyneth Jones and Jeremy Adams – BBC Northern Ireland:

Chris Chambers – Global’s Newsroom North West:

  • Life After Murder
New Journalist of the Year

Alexandra Heal – The Bureau of Investigative Journalism:

Annabelle Timsit – Quartz:

Callum Mason – MoneySavingExpert.com:

Gabriel Pogrund – The Sunday Times:

Hanna Yusuf – BBC News:

Holly Bancroft – The Mail on Sunday:

Paul Caruana Galizia – Tortoise:

Scarlet Howes – Sunday Mirror:

Photojournalism, sponsored by Affinity Photo

Anthony Devlin – Freelance/Getty/AFP

Hannah McKay – Reuters

Richard Pohle – The Times

Stefan Rousseau – Press Association

Philip Coburn – Daily Mirror

Javier Fergo – Freelance

Politics Journalism

Eddie Mair – LBC:

Gary Gibbon – Channel 4 News:

John Ware, Leo Telling, Neil Grant and Rachel Jupp – BBC Panorama:

Jim Pickard, Robert Shrimsley, Jonathan Ford, Chris Giles, Delphine Strauss and Sebastian Payne – Financial Times:

John Domokos and John Harris – The Guardian:

Paul Waugh – Huffpost UK:

Tim Shipman – The Sunday Times:

Toby Helm – The Observer:

Science Journalism, sponsored by Takeda

Akshat Rathi – Quartz:

Damian Carrington – Guardian News and Media:

Graham Lawton – New Scientist:

Nada Farhoud – Daily Mirror:

Tom Warren and Katie J.M. Baker – Buzzfeed:

Maurice Tamman, Matthew Green, Mari Saito, Sarah Slobin and Maryanne Murray – Reuters:

Scoop of the Year

Britain’s #Metoo scandal The Telegraph (Claire Newell and the Telegraph investigation team)

Liam Neeson: ‘I walked the streets with a cosh, hoping I’d be approached by a “black bastard” so that I could kill him’ The Independent (Clemence Michallon)

Police called to Boris Johnson’s flat Guardian News & Media (Jim Waterson)

Got him: Catching the speedboat killer Daily Mail (Sam Greenhill, Inderdeep Bains, Arthur Martin and Emine Sinmaz)

Bring me home: The Times finds former schoolgirl who fled to join Isis in Syrian refugee camp The Times (Anthony Loyd)

Our man in US says Trump is ineptMail on Sunday (Isabel Oakeshott)

Operation Chaos: Whitehall’s secret no-deal plan leakedThe Sunday Times (Rosamund Urwin and Caroline Wheeler)

Trusts alerted as firm stockpiles clinical waste and body parts Health Service Journal (Nick Carding, Shaun Lintern, Ben Clover and James Illman)

Specialist Journalism

Billy Camden – FE Week:

Revealed: The truth behind the 3aaa investigations
Highbury College in £1.4m legal battle with Nigerian state
Principal’s £150k expenses revealed… finally

John Dickens – Schools Week:

Exposed: Agnew’s £35m school waste claims

Daniel Grote – Citywire:

Polly Curtis – Tortoise:

David Bond – Financial Times:

Inside GCHQ: the art of spying in the digital age
Huawei threat uncovers enemy within UK spy agencies
Will Northern Ireland dissidents be able to exploit Brexit chaos?

Zak Garner-Purkis – Construction News:

May Bulman – The Independent:

Peter Apps – Inside Housing:

Sports Journalism

Jeremy Wilson – The Telegraph:

Mark Daly, Calum McKay and Murdoch Rogers – BBC Panorama:

Matt Lawton – The Times / Daily Mail:

Miguel Delaney – The Independent:

Mike Keegan, Laura Lambert and Matt Lawton – Daily Mail Sportsmail investigations team:

Suzanne Wrack – Guardian:

Jonathan Calvert and George Arbuthnott – Sunday Times Insight:

Technology Journalism, sponsored by Huawei

Bill Goodwin, Sebastian Klovig Skelton and Duncan Campbell – Computer Weekly:

Geoff White, Osman Iqbal and Simon Hancock – BBC Click:

Robin Barnwell – ITV Exposure / Hardcash Productions:

Exposure – Undercover: Inside China’s Digital Gulag

Madhumita Murgia – Financial Times:

Mehul Srivastava – Financial Times:

Alex Hern – Guardian:

The 2019 British Journalism Awards are sponsored by:

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