Sally Hayden of The Irish Times has been named Irish Journalist of the Year 2025 at the Irish Journalism Awards, in Dublin on Wednesday.
Ms Hayden also won the accolades for Best Foreign Coverage and Features Journalist of the Year, bringing the number of her awards to three.
The awards programme celebrates the best of Irish journalism across 23 categories, ranging from podcasts and political coverage, to opinion, news reports, sports, and video journalism.
In all, The Irish Times won eight awards at the competition, the highest number of any news publisher.
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Róisín Ingle was named Columnist of the Year Broadsheet for her work which included articles on her life with cancer.
Rosita Boland was the winner in the Arts Journalism and Criticism category. Her works included an article expressing disappointment after revelations about Alice Munro’s daughter’s sexual abuse showed what Boland described as “the Nobel Prize-winning author’s failure as a parent and human being”.
Ms Hayden was named as Features Journalist of the Year (Broadsheet) for several articles including an investigative piece inside a prison for suspected Islamic State members in Syria.
Ms Hayden also won the award for Foreign Coverage for her feature spending two days and nights in Palestinian homes in Masafer Yatta, a collection of villages and hamlets in the occupied West Bank.
The award for the Best Use of Videos went to Chris Maddaloni, who reported on the difficulties of Sudanese refugees in Chad.
The award for Sportswriter of the Year (Broadsheet), went to Ian O’Riordan for a wide body of work, including The Trials of Stephen Roche.
The News Reporter of the Year was awarded to Ken Foxe, a contributor to The Irish Times. His work includes breaking the story of the bike shed at Leinster House which cost more than €335,000.
The Irish Daily Mail/Mail on Sunday won a total of four awards.
Michael O’Toole of The Irish Daily Star/Irish Daily Mirror won two awards. These were for Crime Journalist of the Year and Scoop of the Year. The Irish Daily Star/Irish Daily Mirror’s Derek Foley won another award Sportswriter of the Year (popular).
The Business Post won two awards for Digital Innovation of the Year and for Business Journalist of the Year. The latter was awarded to journalist Killian Woods.
The Irish Sun won the award for best front page while the Irish Sun on Sunday won the award for best headline.
The Irish Examiner won the award for Magazine of the Year 2025. The Sunday Times’s John Mooney won two awards for Investigative Journalism and for Political Journalist of the Year. Showbiz Journalist of the Year was awarded to Eugene Masterson of the Sunday world. The Young Journalist of the Year 2025 was Conor O’Carroll of The Journal Investigates.
The awards programme is organised in association with NewsBrands Ireland and supported by Google News Initiative.
