Four Guardian journalists have been honoured at this year’s British Journalism Awards for their work for the title, which was itself highly commended in the news provider of the year category.

At the ceremony at the Hilton Bankside hotel in central London on Tuesday night, Marina Hyde was described as “clever, innovative and consistently on the ball” as she was handed the prize for Comment Journalism. She was recognised for her writing on subjects including Theresa May’s historic Brexit deal defeat, Prince Andrew and Jeffrey Epstein and Boris Johnson.

The Guardian’s Simon Hattenstone and Daniel Lavelle won the Features Journalism award for their Empty Doorway series, which the judges said provided “gripping accounts of the deaths of homeless people” set out in a “beautiful series of articles” .

And Rob Davies won the Business, Finance and Economics Journalism category for his investigation into government policy and the gambling industry that led to the resignation of Tracey Crouch as sports minister.

The annual awards are handed out by the industry magazine Press Gazette. They were launched in 2012 to promote public interest reporting, and are open to all journalists working across all types of media.

The awards judges said Hanna Yusuf was “clearly a journalistic star in the making”. Photograph: Phil Coomes/BBC

At the ceremony, a tribute was also paid to Hanna Yusuf, a BBC journalist and recipient of the Guardian’s Scott Trust Bursary who died in September at the age of 27. Judges said she was “clearly a journalistic star in the making” whose death was a “tragedy for British journalism because of the stories that will now not be told”.

In one of the final awards of the evening, the Financial Times was named news provider of the year for the second year running after the judges said it combined “consistent high quality journalism across its various platforms with an enviable ability to secure jaw-dropping exclusives”. The Guardian was highly commended in the category.