Fighting for quality news media in the digital age.

Paul Foot Award for campaigning and investigative journalism is relaunched by Private Eye

By Dominic Ponsford

The Paul Foot Award for campaigning and investigative journalism has been relaunched by Private Eye.

The annual prize was launched in 2004 to commemorate campaigning journalist Paul Foot. It was last awarded in March 2015 (for 2014) and was previously organised jointly with The Guardian.

Entries have been invited by 31 March for journalism published in print and online. The winner will be given a £5,000 prize.

Private Eye editor Ian Hislop said: “At a time when the public is being offered the post-truth, the alternative truth and nothing like the truth, we thought it was time to revive a celebration of what defined Foot’s work and what is his continuing legacy   – the great spirit of informed, eloquent, obstinate enquiry.”

The judges include:

  • Julia Langdon, Political Journalist and Broadcaster
  • Simon Jenkins, The Guardian
  • Helen Lewis, New Statesman
  • Amol Rajan, BBC Media Editor
  • Francis Wheen, Private Eye
  • Matt Foot, criminal defence solicitor
  • Padraig Reidy, Little Atoms, Chair of Judges.

The last Paul Foot Award was shared (winners pictured above) between The Sunday Times, for the Fifa Files, and Private Eye for Shady Arabia and the Desert Fix.

Press Gazette was a runner-up for its Save Our Sources campaign which culminated in a change in the law to ensure that police applications to view journalists’ call records made in order to identify a source had to be approved by a judge.

Topics in this article :

Email pged@pressgazette.co.uk to point out mistakes, provide story tips or send in a letter for publication on our "Letters Page" blog

Websites in our network