Liam Thorp

Liverpool Echo’s political editor Liam Thorp is a prominent voice in the region, and caught the eye of judges as “a journalist who understands his newspaper's readers and is at the top of his game”.

For much of 2024, Thorp dedicated his time to exploring and documenting Liverpool's homelessness emergency. Months of reporting, speaking to those facing homelessness as well as those trying to help and investigating where the crisis originated, resulted in several front page splashes and spreads. Judges praised the “thorough and impactful long reads” and “colourful human detail”.

When a response to a Freedom of Information request revealed that two unidentified Liverpool city councillors had been summoned to court over failures to pay council tax, Thorp launched a campaign to reveal their names. He convinced the Information Commissioner to force the council to reveal their identities. 

Finally, Thorp’s extensive political coverage culminated in a special digital project ahead of the General Election entitled ‘Austerity City’, which documented the impact on Merseyside of 14 years of cuts. Months in the making, Thorp and Reach’s Data and Visualisation team produced a standalone website, bringing together data, human stories and visual storytelling. 

Judges concluded that Thorp demonstrated “journalism that really resonates with its audience and makes a difference in its communities”.