Archant Wins The Paul Foot Award 2017
The Hackney Gazette has won this year’s Private Eye Paul Foot Award for an investigation into homelessness in the London borough.
‘The Hidden Homeless: £35m to keep the homeless’ campaign by Emma Youle of the Archant Investigations Unit ran over five weeks earlier this year and was inspired by reporting in June 2016 about a death in a homeless hostel in Hackney.
Youle used a combination of freedom of information requests, undercover reporting, witness testimony and digging through records to reveal human stories and institutional failing. Her campaign resulted in the Hackney Gazette securing commitments from local politicians and authorities to devote more energy to solving the borough’s problems, rather than hiding them.
Set up in memory of the investigative journalist Paul Foot, who died in 2004, the award celebrates the tremendous work being done by some of the most talented and tenacious journalists working in the UK today. The other finalists for the 2017 award, in alphabetical order, were:
- Daniel Balint-Kurti & Leigh Baldwin, Global Witness – The Deceivers
- Katherine Faulkner, Daily Mail – How Royal Mail helps conmen defraud the elderly
- Will Hurst, The Architects’ Journal – The Garden Bridge investigation
- Billy Kenber, The Times – Drug company profiteering
- Maeve McClenaghan & Crina Boros, Energydesk – Big fish barons squeeze out small-scale fishermen
- Daniel Taylor, The Guardian/The Observer – Football’s sexual abuse scandal
Padraig Reidy, chair of the judges, said: “The judges were unanimous on one thing: the extraordinary range and quality of this year’s entrants. It was wonderful to read so much brilliant work and be reminded of the good that journalism can do.
“Emma Youle’s Hidden Homeless campaign combined investigation and campaigning to shed light on a problem many people don’t realise is happening right in front of our faces. She has made a difference to people’s lives, which is the best a journalist can hope for.
“It’s also important to recognise that in an age of squeezed resources for local papers, a brilliant journalist like Emma is given the support to pursue a story like Hackney’s Hidden Homeless.”
This year’s judging panel comprised 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; and Padraig Reidy, Little Atoms.
The winning campaign was awarded £5,000, with the other six shortlisted campaigns each receiving £1,000.