Three Star journalists receive honours at CJF awards gala
Three Toronto Star journalists earned laurels at the Canadian Journalism Foundation’s awards gala Thursday evening.
Columnist and feature writer Catherine Porter claimed the Landsberg Award for her examination of women’s equality issues. Taking the baton from Star columnist Heather Mallick, who won last year, Porter called out the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario in 2015 for turning a blind eye to one doctor’s history of sex assault.
Porter’s focus on social justice also led her to argue for women’s right to don the headscarf. The foundation also bestowed the award on a second set of recipients, Radio-Canada’s reporter-producer duo Josée Dupuis and Emmanuel Marchand.
Matt Galloway, a jury member and CBC radio host, praised Porter and the Radio-Canada team for “exposing bias, challenging the establishment and ultimately leading to significant change.”
The Star’s Jayme Poisson won the Greg Clark Award for early-career journalists after proposing to effec- tively camp out at two information offices at the provincial and federal level to study how they handle access-to-information requests.
“Freedom of information requests can be an exceptional tool for journalists to access the unvarnished, un-spun truth,” Poisson said.
Star feature reporter Katie Daubs took over the St. Clair Balfour Fellowship from colleague Emily Mathieu. Daubs and four other fellows will undertake a year of study at the University of Toronto’s Massey College. Eduardo Lima, a freelance photographer whose work has appeared in the Star, won the Tom Hanson Photojournalism Award.
Introduced by Star editor-in-chief Michael Cooke, Boston Globe Spotlight team reporters Sacha Pfeiffer and Michael Rezendes and their editor Walter Robinson were given a special citation for their work uncovering child abuse in the Catholic Church. CBC News won the Jackman Award for Excellence in Journalism, largely for its reporting on missing and murdered indigenous women and girls.
Kicking things off, CJF chair and former Star publisher John Cruickshank said his enthusiasm for journalism hasn’t waned — in fact, it’s “utterly restored.”
The Atkinson Fellowship in Public Policy — sponsored jointly by the Atkinson Foundation, the Honderich Family and the Star — went to Catherine Wallace.
She plans to examine the state of Canada’s news industry and emerge with proposals to keep it dynamic and relevant.
Longtime CTV journalist and national anchor Lloyd Robertson received a lifetime achievement award.