The British Journalism Awards were founded in 2012, in the shadow of the phone-hacking scandal, as a deliberate act of defiance: proof that for every reporter who disgraced the trade, there were hundreds quietly doing the public good. The test for entry has never changed since. Not circulation, not clicks, not fame. Did the journalism serve the public interest?
That test produces a particular roll of honour. David Walsh, who refused to believe in Lance Armstrong. Andrew Norfolk, who exposed the Rotherham grooming scandal. Amelia Gentleman, whose Windrush reporting changed government policy. Dan McCrum, who took on Wirecard and won. Robert Moore, the only television journalist inside the Capitol on January 6. Pippa Crerar, who broke Partygate. Read the winners' list and you are reading the recent history of Britain, as told by the people who found it out first. Press Gazette's editor-in-chief Dominic Ponsford put it best at the 2025 ceremony:
These are the most important awards in the world because they celebrate the people defending reality itself.
Why we sponsor it
We spend all year connecting the people behind this kind of reporting with the newsrooms that need them, and one evening a year applauding them. In 2025 we sponsored the Foreign Affairs Journalism award, the category closest to what journalist.net exists for: reporting done far from home, which runs on local fixers, stringers and producers, on the ground, on deadline. Our world, in other words.
The 2025 ceremony gave a sense of the company we were keeping. Jeremy Vine hosted. Judges weighed more than 600 entries across 24 categories. Cathy Newman took Journalist of the Year for the Church of England abuse investigation, including the interview that led to the first forced resignation of an Archbishop of Canterbury in history. Channel 4 News was named News Provider of the Year for the second year running.
December, again
We are back for 2026. The ceremony is on Thursday 10 December 2026 at the Hilton London Bankside, and entries close on 24 September. If you are a journalist with public-interest work you are proud of, enter. Entry has been free for underrepresented groups since 2021, and the judges read everything.
And if you are a newsroom or a brand wondering where to find the kind of journalist who ends up on that stage, we have around 11,000 suggestions.
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