Paul Lewis, The Guardian's special projects editor, has won the innovation-of-the-year category of the European Press Prize for Reading the Riots.
His year-long research project into the causes of the 2011 summer riots, which was run jointly with Professor Tim Newburn of the London School of Economics, was commended by the judges for its new approach to reporting. It combined investigative journalism with scientific methodology.
Lewis analysed the mechanisms that led to the violence and to its rapid spread from London to other major towns and cities in Britain. It seriously questioned many assumptions about the riots, from the role of social media to the involvement of criminal gangs.
Lewis commented: "Needless to say, there is no other news organisation in the UK - or the world, probably - that would give its journalists the freedom to create an innovation like Reading the Riots."
The news reporting award went to three reporters from the Danish daily Jyllands Posten - Orla Borg, Carsten Ellegaard Christensen and Morten Pihl - for their investigation on the role of Morten Storm, an ex-Danish secret serviceman who helped the CIA locate an Al-Qaida leader.
Judges gave the commentator award to Nikos Chrysoloras, the Brussels correspondent for the Greek daily Kathimerini, for his article "Why Greece must remain in the Eurozone", which was published in papers across Europe.
And the editing award went to Ihor Pochynok, chief editor of Express a daily newspaper published in Lviv in the Ukraine. Judges said the paper was a prime example of a local newspaper becoming the opinion leader of its region and assuming at times a national role.
On the judging panel, chaired by former Sunday Times editor Harry Evans, were Sylvie Kaufmann, editorial director of the France's Le Monde; Jørgen Ejbøl, vice chairman of the Jyllands-Posten Foundation; Paolo Flores d'Arcais, one of the most influential philosophers and writers in Italy; and Yevgenia Albats, editor in chief and CEO of the Moscow-based political weekly The New Times.
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