Ottawa Citizen

Team coverage of bus tragedy wins award for Citizen

- GORD HOLDER

A team of Ottawa Citizen reporters and photograph­ers won a Canadian Associatio­n of Journalist­s award for “daily excellence” for coverage of the Westboro bus crash in January 2019.

The Citizen team included reporters Blair Crawford, Elizabeth Payne, Kelly Egan, Jon Willing, Shaamini Yogaretnam, Taylor Blewett and Joanne Laucius, and photograph­ers Wayne Cuddington and Julie Oliver.

The CAJ award winners were announced online Saturday evening because the associatio­n’s annual conference, scheduled for this weekend in Montreal, was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“This was a magnificen­t team effort on a frigid Friday night in January when the reporting conditions were brutal,” said Egan, who was the Citizen representa­tive on the CAJ awards presentati­on via Zoom. “Good words and photos, video and graphics, it brought out the best in us, only four hours from deadline. As we turn 175 this year, a great feather in our cap that reinforces the Citizen’s place as a source of timely, reliable reporting in episodes of tragedy, of which we’ve endured so many.”

A team from the London Free Press, another Postmedia publicatio­n, was also nominated in the daily excellence category.

Postmedia journalist­s also won two of three other CAJ awards for which they were nominated.

The Montreal Gazette’s Christophe­r Curtis received the APTN/ CAJ Reconcilia­tion Award for a series of stories on Indigenous issues, including a compelling feature story about Air Inuit pilot Melissa

Haney, while a consortium that included the Regina Leader-Post was a winner in the data journalism category for a series on levels of lead in tap water across Canada.

The Windsor Star’s Dave Battagello was a nominee in the scoop category for a report on how a dormant Michigan industrial site with a history that included handling uranium rods had collapsed into the Detroit River across from Windsor.

Previously, the Citizen team also received a citation of merit in the National Newspaper Awards in the breaking news category for coverage of the tragedy that claimed the lives of three people and injured many more when a double-decker OC Transpo bus collided with an overhang at Westboro Station.

 ?? WAYNE CUDDINGTON ?? First responders attend to victims of a horrific rush hour bus crash at the Westboro Station near Tunney’s Pasture. The Citizen’s coverage of the event won a Canadian Associatio­n of Journalist­s award.
WAYNE CUDDINGTON First responders attend to victims of a horrific rush hour bus crash at the Westboro Station near Tunney’s Pasture. The Citizen’s coverage of the event won a Canadian Associatio­n of Journalist­s award.

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