The Guardian and the Observer have won three British Journalism Awards, including sports journalism of the year for Daniel Taylor for exposing sexual abuse in football.

The Observer’s Carole Cadwalladr won the technology journalism award for her investigation into Russia’s influence on the Brexit referendum while Guardian columnist Aditya Chakrabortty scooped the award for comment journalism.

The British Journalism Awards, organised by the Press Gazette – the industry magazine for journalists, aims to celebrate and promote public interest journalism.

Created partly as a response to the hacking scandal and the Leveson inquiry, it is unique among the major journalism prizes in the UK in that it is open to all journalists regardless of whether they work in TV, radio, print or online.

At the awards ceremony at the De Vere Grand Connaught Rooms in London on Monday night, the top award – news provider of the year – went to Inside Housing, a business to business publication, while journalist of the year went to LBC radio presenter Nick Ferrari. The Manchester Evening News won the local heroes award for its “committed” coverage of the Manchester Arena bombing, which killed 22 people.

Guardian News and Media was shortlisted 12 times, with four nominations for the Observer and eight for the Guardian.

The other GNM journalists nominated were:

• Oliver Wainwright and Vanessa Thorpe for arts and entertainment journalism.
• Money editor Patrick Collinson for business, finance and economics journalism.
• Polly Toynbee and Nick Cohen for comment journalism.
• Emma Graham-Harrison for foreign affairs journalism.
• Sarah Boseley for science and health journalism.
• Rowan Moore for infrastructure, development and construction journalism.
• Paul Boyd, Fred McConnell, Josh Strauss and Ekaterina Ochagavia, who designed the Guardian’s Dab shareable social videos, for the innovation award.