The Manchester Evening News took home a clutch of awards at the Regional Press Awards today for its work in 2017, the year in which 22 people were killed and hundreds injured in a terror attack in the city.

The MEN, owned by Reach (formerly Trinity Mirror), was named Daily/Sunday Newspaper of the Year (with a circulation above 20,000) prompting journalists at rival publications to stand and applaud the news team as they collected the prize.

The newspaper’s splash, printed just hours after the fatal bomb blast at a music venue on 22 May and simply headlined: “Massacre” (pictured), won Front Page of the Year. Judges said it had “summed up the enormity of what had been unfolding in the city centre”.