Citizen reporters nominated for in-depth features

Investigations catch eye of Canadian Association of Journalists award judges

Five Citizen reporters have been named finalists for annual Canadian Association of Journalists awards for outstanding investigative journalism printed or broadcast in 2017.

Vito Pilieci was nominated in the “text feature” category for his investigation into how dreams of producing solar energy became a nightmare for the small northern Ontario town of Blind River.

Pilieci spent the better part of three years on the story, which originated as a line item in the bankruptcy filings of failed Ottawa waste-to-energy firm Plasco. A minor footnote, an $18-million investment loss, led to a loan taken out by a tiny municipality in Northern Ontario for $49.5 million.

Pilieci conducted dozens of interviews, filed access to information requests, and made the trip to Blind River to find out how the town got the loan and how so much of the money ended up with Ottawa’s Plasco. The story underlined failures in the checks and balances at every level of government, which should have put more scrutiny on the town and its solar energy aspirations.

Elizabeth Payne, Aedan Helmer and Drake Fenton were nominated in the “data journalism” category for an ongoing investigation into long-term care in Ottawa.

The investigation began after the family of 89-year-old Georges Karam installed a video camera in Karam’s room at a the Garry J. Armstrong long-term care home and captured a personal support worker punching him 11 times in the face as he lay in bed. The Citizen series uncovered shocking cases of abuse, neglect and chronic non-compliance with provincial laws designed to protect some of society’s most vulnerable people.

Andrew Duffy was nominated in the “open” category for Fire and Death in the Ottawa Valley, a series that revealed the existence of an ongoing OPP serial killer investigation in a rural county south of Ottawa.

Duffy’s series began as a feature to mark the 10th anniversary of the unsolved killing of Randy Rankin, a horse racing blogger and parttime clown. It ended as a sprawling investigation that revealed OPP detectives linked Rankin’s 2007 slaying to another, more recent homicide on the same rural road in Morewood, and that those crimes have been tied to a decades-old serial killer case.

As part of the series, the newspaper also reproduced a crime map, developed by the OPP, that links 50 unsolved arsons, five homicides and a suspicious death in Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry.

Earlier this month, Duffy also won the Registered Nurses’ Association of Ontario award for best in-depth feature or series. The association recognized a feature that followed the medical journeys of two Syrian refugee families, and examined how the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario changed to meet the needs of immigrants.

“It is always nice to see significant projects like these recognized,” said Citizen editor-in-chief Michelle Richardson. “These nominations are a testament to our newsroom team’s commitment to journalistic excellence.”

The award recipients will be announced May 5 in Toronto.