Torstar journalists honoured at National Newspaper Awards
Torstar took home three prizes Friday at the 70th National Newspaper Awards, one of the highest honours in Canadian journalism. The Toronto Star won one award and sister papers the St. Catharines Standard and Waterloo Region Record received one each.
Daniel Dale, the Star’s Washington bureau chief, won the Norman Webster Award for International Reporting for his exhaustive coverage and factchecking of U.S. President Donald Trump.
Grant LaFleche, a reporter and columnist at the St. Catharines Standard, won the George Brown Award for Investigations for a yearlong probe that uncovered a political conspiracy to manipulate the hiring of Niagara Region’s top bureaucrat and a secret contract worth more than a million dollars.
Greg Mercer of the Waterloo Region Record won the award for Local Reporting for his coverage of the health problems that afflicted workers from the region’s once-booming rubber industry and the apparent reluctance of safety officials to accept compensation claims.
“Celebrating the importance of journalism is something we rarely pause to do,” said Irene Gentle, Editor of the Toronto Star. “The work of the winners and nominees across Torstar is deep, meaningful and made a difference. It is a privilege to work in newsrooms with such talented and committed journalists.”
In total, Torstar received 12 National Newspaper Award nominations, including six for the Toronto Star.
The other nominees included Rachel Mendleson, Diana Zlomislic, Robert Cribb, Marco Chown Oved, Andrew Bailey and Emma Jarratt in the Project of the Year category for the “Medical Disorder” series, an 18-month investigation on the discipline records of doctors permitted to practise on both sides of the U.S.-Canada border.
A team of 42 journalists were nominated in Breaking News for the Star’s coverage of the Yonge St. van attack.
Cameron Tulk, David Schnitman, Tania Pereira and Fadi Yaacoub were nominated in the Presentation category for a project in which the Star factchecked every question and answer over five days of question period in Parliament.
Feature writer Mary Ormsby was nominated in the Sports category for her reporting on new information about Ben Johnson’s positive drug test at the 1988 Olympics, and for a story about boxing legend George Chuvalo.
Photojournalist Carlos Osorio was nominated for his photo essay accompanying a story about a senior forced to move out of her longtime home in a public housing building.
The Globe and Mail won 10 awards, the most of any publication. Other winners on Friday included the Saskatoon Star Phoenix and The Canadian Press for their coverage of the Humboldt Broncos bus crash.
It was also announced Friday that Karyn Pugliese, executive director of news and current affairs at APTN, was awarded the 25th Martin Wise Goodman Canadian Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University.
The fellowship is funded by an endowment in memory of Martin Wise Goodman, the late president of Toronto Star Newspapers Ltd. Pugliese will join 26 other journalists in the 82nd class of Nieman Fellows.