Star takes home national awards for business, cartooning
The Toronto Star has taken home two National Newspaper Awards, one of the country’s top journalism honours.
The Star won the awards for best in business, as well as best editorial cartooning.
The business award was for in-depth coverage by Kenyon Wallace, Marco Chown Oved, Ed Tubb and Brendan Kennedy uncovering the fact that death rates from COVID-19 were higher in for-profit long-termcare homes than in other types of long-term care residences.
“We hope our reporting contributes, in some small way, to ensuring that what happened in long-term-care last year is never repeated, and that the companies and people who profit from operating nursing homes are held accountable for their performance during the pandemic,” said Kennedy, a Star investigative reporter.
Star editor in chief Anne Marie Owens said: “The Star has demonstrated a deep commitment to demanding greater accountability from the longterm-care system and its focus on the issues has been unwavering. This kind of deep data work and reporting helps to advocate powerfully for change.”
Star publisher Jordan Bitove praised the reporting as “vital public-interest journalism. “I’m incredibly proud of Kenyon, Marco, Ed and Brendan. This is important work,” Bitove said, also praising the contribution of winning editorial cartoonist Michael de Adder.
De Adder, of the Star and Halifax Chronicle Herald, won for three cartoons, including one mocking ex-U.S. president Donald Trump.
The Star had been nominated for six other awards.
> The entire newsroom was recognized in breaking news for coverage of the shooting down of a passenger jet in Iran that killed 176 people, including dozens of Canadians.
> Photographer Steve Russell was nominated for his feature photo of a couple dining on a restaurant patio despite heavy rainfall.
> Kate Allen, Rachel Mendleson, Jennifer Yang and Andrew Bailey were nominated in explanatory journalism for using graphics, maps and “enterprising analysis to up-end assumptions” about Toronto’s first wave of COVID-19.
> Crime reporter Wendy Gillis and investigative reporter Rachel Mendleson were nominated for their investigation delving into how much physical force police officers use against Canadian citizens.
> The Star’s Bob Bishop was nominated for a front-page design that used the 50 states to illustrate an election that wasn’t going to be decided by the time readers got their newspapers.
> The Star was nominated for Project of the Year for reinventing its newsroom to offer readers a lifeline of information and guidance to help them cope with the worst health disaster Canada has ever faced.
“The Star’s award-nominated and -winning work shows the tremendous range and power of the team under former editor Irene Gentle in a year that harnessed all the newsroom’s creativity and focus on impactful journalism,” Owens said.
Other nominated Torstar papers:
> Leah Gerber of the Waterloo Region Record was nominated in Beat Reporting for work focusing on the Grand River watershed; Terry Pender of the Record in Local Reporting for examining how a member of a Nazi death squad avoided deportation from Canada; and Graeme MacKay of the Hamilton Spectator was nominated in Editorial Cartooning.