Jonathan Calvert was recognised for leading a year of agenda-setting investigations exposing widespread blood-doping in international athletics and corruption at the top of football world governing body Fifa.
The Marie Colvin award for raising the reputation of journalism over the course of their career went to Alan Rusbridger who stepped down this summer after 20 years as Guardian editor.
And the hard-fought investigation of the year prize went to The Guardian for the HSBC files.
The awards for public interest journalism are organised by Press Gazette and were held this year in association with Audi.
They are open to all journalists wherever they work and attracted entries from every major newspaper publisher, broadcaster and online news publisher in the UK, say the organisers.
They attracted more than 300 entries for the 15 categories. Last more than 200 journalists gathered at Stationers' Hall in London for the awards reception.
Press Gazette editor and chairman of judges Dominic Ponsford said the number of high-quality entries to the awards suggest campaigning and investigative journalism is growing in the UK.
He said: “I think these awards provide clear evidence that publishers across the media increasingly see the value of campaigning and investigative journalism as a way of rising above the digital noise and chatter.”
Full list of winners for the British Journalism Awards 2015:
DIGITAL INNOVATION
Sponsored by Citi
Winner: Vice News
NEW JOURNALIST OF THE YEAR
Sponsored by the Stationers' Crown Woods Academy
Winner: Simon Murphy of The Mail on Sunday
CAMPAIGN OF THE YEAR
Winner: The Guardian for Keep it in the Ground
Highly commended: David Jones, Sam Greenhill, Ian Drury and Jack Doyle of the Daily Mail for US Gulag That Shames the West – the campaign for the closure of Guantanamo Bay and the release of Shaker Aamer
FOREIGN AFFAIRS JOURNALISM
Winner: Patrick Kingsley of The Guardian
POLITICS JOURNALISM
Sponsored by Media Focus
Winner: Tom Newton Dunn of The Sun for ‘Plebgate – what really happened’
PHOTOJOURNALISM
Winner: Manu Brabo of The Sunday Times
Highly Commended: Jack Hill of The Times and Philip Coburn of the Daily Mirror
BUSINESS, FINANCE AND ECONOMICS JOURNALISM
Winner: Daniel Jones of The Sun
Highly commended: Charles Levinson of Reuters
SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY AND HEALTH JOURNALISM
Sponsored by Astellas
Winner: Deborah Cohen from the BMJ
Highly commended: Natasha Loder of The Economist
BREAKING NEWS AWARD
Winner: Jonathan Calvert, George Arbuthnott and Bojan Pancevski (Insight) – The Sunday Times for coverage of Fifa and Sepp Blatter.
SPORTS JOURNALISM
Sponsored by SportCal
Winner: Mark Daly, Murdoch Rodgers and David Epstein - BBC Scotland/Panorama/ProPublica for 'Catch Me If You Can’ investigation into athletics doping
Highly commended: Jonathan Calvert, George Arbuthnott and David Collins of The Sunday Times for The Doping Scandal
POPULAR JOURNALISM
Winner: The news team at The Mail on Sunday
LOCAL HEROES
Winner: Jeanette Oldham of the Birmingham Mail
Highly commended: Andrew Gilligan of The Daily and Sunday Telegraph
INVESTIGATION OF THE YEAR
Sponsored by Public Concern at Work
Winner: Juliette Garside, James Ball, David Leigh and David Pegg of The Guardian for the HSBC Files
THE MARIE COLVIN AWARD FOR RAISING THE REPUTATION OF BRITISH JOURNALISM
Winner: Alan Rusbridger
JOURNALIST OF THE YEAR
Winner: Jonathan Calvert of The Sunday Times
