Former British Journalism Awards journalist of the year Gabriel Pogrund has been named editor of the Sunday Times investigations team Insight.
Pogrund was given the prestigious award in December 2023 for work in his role as Whitehall editor.
The Sunday Times has now appointed him to lead an expanded investigations team as Insight editor.
Pogrund will be joined by two investigative correspondents: Emanuele Midolo, currently investigations reporter with a focus on crime, corruption and money laundering, and Venetia Menzies, currently visual investigations editor at The Times and Sunday Times.
A deputy editor will also be appointed to join the team, which will produce written, video and audio output starting in May.
Previous Sunday Times Insight editor Jonathan Calvert is also a former British Journalism Awards journalist of the year winner, receiving the accolade in 2015.
Calvert, who had been Insight editor since 2005, and his deputy editor George Arbuthnott took voluntary redundancy earlier this year.
Sunday Times editor Ben Taylor said the newsbrand is “committed to ambitious investigations” and described the trio as “already a formidable team”.
He said Pogrund has “produced some of the most revelatory reporting in British journalism”.
His work has prompted the resignation of former chief whip Gavin Williamson over bullying allegations, revealed the presence of a paid lobbyist as a close aide to short-lived UK premier Liz Truss, told an untold tragedy at the heart of Britain’s secret intelligence community, and helped topple ex-BBC chairman Richard Sharp after exposing murky financial details involving Boris Johnson.
Pogrund said: “There are few publications in the world that rival The Sunday Times’ history of investigative journalism – or its ongoing commitment to the principles of public interest reporting.
“I’m honoured to lead the newly expanded team and will use it, to the best of my abilities, to tell important stories as impactfully and innovatively as possible. If you are a source with a sensitive, complex but significant story, we remain open for business and would like to hear from you.”
Speaking to Press Gazette in 2023, Pogrund said investigative journalism “never comes about anything other than incredibly painfully. It is a masochistic business.
“You’ve got to deal with legal threats, you’ve got to deal with things like the Official Secrets Act, libel and defamation law, and also just complexity – telling difficult stories requires a lot of patience – and it requires a lot of resource and investment. And I feel very, very proud and very fortunate to benefit from that at The Sunday Times.”
Insight, which first launched in 1963, has published revelations such as corruption at Fifa and the existence of nuclear weapons at Dimona in Israel, unmasked MI6 agent Kim Philby as a Soviet spy, and campaigned for the victims of thalidomide.
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