Postmedia brings home seven awards
TORONTO — Postmedia Network won seven awards at the National Newspaper Awards Friday night, with dual wins for both the Vancouver Sun and the Ottawa Citizen.
Kim Bolan, a reporter with the Vancouver Sun, took home an award for beat reporting for her crime coverage. A Sun reporter since 1984, Bolan has been at the front lines of B.C. Crime coverage stretching all the way back to the Air India bombing. Last year, she covered the verdict on the 2007 Surrey Six verdict as well as a two-part series on Mexican cartels setting up shop in B.C.
Another Vancouver Sun writer, Pete McMartin, got the nod for column-writing. Specifically, judges picked McMartin based on a trio of stories he had written about playing catch, attending a wedding and celebrating Valentine’s Day.
Patrick White of the Globe and Mail won the long feature category for his story Solitary: A death sentence, revealing a corrections system out of step with much of the developed world.
Veteran Leader-Post reporter Barb Pacholik was also nominated in the long feature category for her story Betrayal: What do you do when you discover your friend is a pedophile?. Published on May 31, 2014, the piece examines the case of Bradley Chanin, a Saskatchewan man who became one of the few Canadians charged under the country’s sex tourism laws, as well as Jon Walsh, the friend who made the difficult decision to turn Chanin in upon realizing he was a pedophile.
The Ottawa Citizen won Best Feature Photo with an image of 14-year-old Jonathan Pitre, who suffers from Epidermolysis bullosa, a rare disease defined by severe blistering and shearing of the skin that leaves Jonathan in constant pain.
Among Julie Oliver’s photo essay on Pitre was an image of the boy crouching nude in front of a heater, his entire body covered by blisters. The National Post won Best Presentation for Terror on the Hill, its package on the Ottawa attack last year, which included a photo gallery and a two-page graphic.
The Toronto Sun, which just recently became a Postmedia property, scored best sports photo with an image Stan Behal took of tennis player Gael Monfils diving desperately for the ball at the Rogers Cup.
Notable at this year’s NNA awards was the first time a journalist of the year had been designated. Editorial cartoonist Bruce MacKinnon, who draws for the Halifax Chronicle-Herald, was the inaugural winner.
As per usual, the Globe and Mail took top honours at the ceremony, with five awards total. The Canadian Press, the Hamilton Spectator, the Moncton Times & Transcript, and the Toronto Star each took two each.
The National Newspaper Awards are open to daily newspapers, news agencies and select online news sites.
Seventy-one finalists were nominated in 22 categories out of a total of 1,297 entries.