Star staff honoured with national awards
Arts critic and photographer recognized as among the best Canadian journalists of 2016
The Toronto Star took home two top prizes at the National Newspaper Awards, one of the highest honours in Canadian journalism, on Friday.
Murray Whyte, the Star’s art critic, won the award for best Arts and Entertainment reporting. Whyte earned the honour with his coverage of Wanda Nanibush, the first curator of Canadian and Indigenous Art at the Art Gallery of Ontario, and his reporting on Come From Away, the Broadway musical, written by Canadians, about the planeloads of air travellers diverted to Gander, N.L., after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Star photographer Lucas Oleniuk won the Sports Photo award for his shot of Canadian Brianne TheisenEaton after her bronze-medal finish in the 2016 Olympic women’s heptathlon, her opponents sprawled at her feet.
“I give the Star’s two winners a standing O, while at the same time I salute the outstanding journalism still being done across our country, demonstrated by the hard task the judges had weighing all the nominations,” Star editor Michael Cooke said of the awards.
Among the winners at the 68th National Newspaper Awards was Mark MacKinnon of the Globe and Mail, declared 2016’s Journalist of the Year for his reporting on the Syrian war, Brexit, an attempted coup in Turkey and global instability.
MacKinnon was also named top International reporter.
Globe and Mail reporter Kathy Tomlinson won the Investivative re- porting award for an exposé of unsavoury practices linked to the B.C. real estate boom.
Fort McMurray Today, the Edmonton Journal and Edmonton Sun won the Breaking News category coverage of the Alberta wildfire and ensuing evacuation of Fort McMurray.
The National Newspaper Awards recognize daily newspapers, news agencies and online news sites in Canada. The Journalist of the Year is awarded $2,500. Winners of all other categories receive $1,000.
Over 950 entries were submitted for consideration prior to this year’s awards. Only 70 were chosen as award finalists, including several Star journalists.
David Bruser and Jayme Poisson were nominated for the Investigations award for their extensive look at mercury contamination in Grassy Narrows First Nation.
Health reporter Theresa Boyle and Work and Wealth reporter Sara Mojtehedzadeh were both nominated for the Beat Reporting award.
Jordan Himelfarb was nominated in the category of Editorial Writing. Amy Dempsey was nominated in the Long Feature category for her piece on the miscarriage of justice that led a Canadian battling severe mental illness to end up in a notorious American prison. Mary Ormsby and Paul Hunter were nominated in the Sports reporting category for their series on three Canadian Olympic boxing heroes from 1984 and the sport’s dangerous legacy.