Finalists announced for 2013 National Newspaper Awards

TORONTO, March 17, 2014 /CNW/ - The Globe and Mail has 14 nominations to lead all entrants in the 65th National Newspaper Awards competition.

The Toronto Star has 13 nominations and Montreal's La Presse has nine finalists in the competition, which is open to daily newspapers as well as online news sites approved for entry by the NNA Board of Governors.

Other organizations with multiple nominations include the Canadian Press, with four, and the Calgary Herald, National Post and Winnipeg Free Press, with three each. One of the Herald's nominations is a joint entry with the Edmonton Journal in the Investigations category.

The Journal is also nominated in one other category, and six other newspapers each have two nominations as well: Halifax Chronicle Herald, Montreal Gazette, Ottawa Citizen, St. Catharines Standard, Waterloo Region Record and Windsor Star.

Eight other organizations - seven daily papers and one news agency - received one nomination each.

There are a total of 69 finalists in 22 categories, selected from 1,206 entries for work published in 2013. Of 57 newspapers and online sites to submit entries, 22 organizations have been nominated as finalists.

The winners will be announced at an awards ceremony in Charlottetown, P.E.I. on Friday, May 30. Winners will receive cheques for $1,000 and a certificate of award. Other finalists receive citations of merit.

This is the 65th year for the awards program, and the 25th year under the current administrative structure.

Highlights of this year's nominations:

• Michèle Ouimet of La Presse is nominated in two categories: Columns and (with colleague Agnès Gruda) International. Ouimet has won four previous times and has been a finalist four other times.
• Brian Gable of the Globe and Mail and Serge Chapleau of La Presse are finalists for the 13th time, both in the Editorial Cartooning category. Chapleau has won the award a record seven times while Gable has been the winner on six occasions.
• Three-time winner Frank Gunn of the Canadian Press is nominated in the News Feature Photo category.
• Three-time winner Mark MacKinnon of the Globe and Mail is nominated, along with colleague Marina Strauss, in International.
• Three-time winner Lucas Oleniuk of the Toronto Star is nominated in News Photo.
• Three-time winner André Pratte of La Presse is nominated in Editorials.
• Three-time winner Grant Robertson of the Globe and Mail is nominated in Short Feature.
• John Roe of the Waterloo Region Record is nominated for the third consecutive year in Editorials. Roe won the award last year and was also the winner in 2006.

Nominated entries can be viewed at the NNA website: www.nna.ccj.ca.

The nominees:

Arts and Entertainment

• James Adams, Globe and Mail, for two stories about the world of visual art (including one that explored an intriguing quest to authenticate a painting) and a review of the film Inside Llewyn Davis
• Linda Barnard, Toronto Star, for a story about Edmonton filmmaker Michael Jorgensen, a review of Woody Allen's film Blue Jasmine, and a feature about the making of the film Empire of Dirt
• Ian Brown, Globe and Mail, for an interview with Mikhail Baryshnikov, a profile of an artist who works in the 150-year-old "plein air" tradition, and a feature about the problem of judging photography in an age where cameras are ubiquitous

Beat Reporting

• Dakshana Bascaramurty, Globe and Mail, for coverage of the suburban communities surrounding Toronto
• Tom Blackwell, National Post, for coverage of the health beat
• Charlie Fidelman, Montreal Gazette, for coverage of the health beat

Breaking News

• Calgary Herald team for coverage of floods that swept across southern Alberta
• Montreal La Presse team for coverage of the massive explosion caused by a runaway train in Lac-Mégantic, Que.
• Ottawa Citizen team for coverage of a collision between a double-decker city bus and a VIA passenger train that left six people dead

Business

• James Bagnall, Ottawa Citizen, for an investigation revealing how a building tradesman and accused fraudster was also a CSIS informant
• Globe and Mail team for in-depth analysis of the rapid decline of BlackBerry maker Research in Motion from a global technology leader to a company struggling to stay alive
• Bill Redekop, Winnipeg Free Press, for a two-part series on the rise and fall of an Internet pharmacy venture

Columns

• Luisa D'Amato, Waterloo Region Record, for columns on an inquest into the death of an inmate, plans for a local casino, and the shenanigans of school board trustees
• Royson James, Toronto Star, for columns on violence within the city's black community, the police shooting of a man on a city bus, and the challenge facing Toronto voters in the next mayoral election
• Michèle Ouimet, Montreal La Presse, for three columns on a proposed charter of values that deeply divided the province of Quebec

Editorial Cartooning

• Serge Chapleau, Montreal La Presse
• Brian Gable, Globe and Mail
• Bruce MacKinnon, Halifax Chronicle Herald

Editorials

• Tony Keller, Globe and Mail
• André Pratte, Montreal La Presse
• John Roe, Waterloo Region Record

Explanatory Work

• John Allemang, Globe and Mail, for a piece exploring the pleasures, and the pleasurable pain, crossword puzzles have given to newspaper readers every day for a century
• Claire Brownell, Windsor Star, for exposing just how much of her city belongs to the billionaire owner of the Ambassador Bridge, who has been buying and boarding up properties in hopes of building a new bridge to Detroit
• Amy Dempsey, Toronto Star, for using the case of a mentally ill man who killed a Toronto police sergeant with a stolen snowplow to explain what it takes, and what it means, for someone to be found neither guilty nor innocent in the eyes of the law
• Wendy Gillis, Toronto Star, for a report breaking down the complex task of cleaning up the urban oil spill caused by the Lac-Mégantic train disaster

Feature Photo

• Tyler Anderson, National Post, for a photo of a fan being grabbed by security guards as he slides down a stadium wall beside a giant camera ad
• Mark Blinch, Reuters, for a picture of a man and woman talking between a barrier that divided men's and women's prayer areas inside a mosque
• Leah Rae Hennel, Calgary Herald, for a balletic image of a woman leaping over a huge street-corner puddle into the arms of her husband

International

• Mark MacKinnon and Marina Strauss, Globe and Mail, for a report exploring the misery and exploitation that brings clothes from sweatshops in Bangladesh to store shelves in Canada
• Michèle Ouimet and Agnès Gruda, Montreal La Presse, for an examination of Salafists, Islamist militants working to foment revolution and violence in Libya, Tunisia and Syria
• Michelle Shephard, Tonda MacCharles, Andrew Livingstone and Laurent Prieur, Toronto Star, for an investigation into issues surrounding two Canadians who had been lured by Al Qaeda-inspired groups with the promise of jihad in Africa's so-called "Arc of Instability"

Investigations

• Adrian Humphreys, National Post, for a report exposing the attempts of a mysterious facilitator, working outside normal channels and using unconventional methods, to deport long-term illegal immigrants to Iran, South Africa, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Guinea and Cameroon
• Karen Kleiss, Darcy Henton, Stephanie Coombs, Darren Francey and Paula Simons, Calgary Herald/Edmonton Journal, for an investigation spanning four years that produced stunning revelations about the deaths of children in Alberta's foster care system
• Vincent Larouche and David Santerre, Montreal La Presse, for uncovering a crime network that funneled hundreds of Roma from Romania, as well as some impostors, into Canada

Local Reporting

• Dan Dakin, St. Catharines Standard, for a three-part investigative series on a failed private football school in Niagara
• Ian Hitchen, Brandon Sun, for coverage of allegations that children in a close-knit Manitoba Old Order Mennonite community had been physically abused, some with a cattle prod
• Grant LaFleche, St. Catharines Standard, for a series exploring the deaths of at least 126 workers during the building of the Welland Canal a century ago
• New Brunswick Telegraph Journal team for extensive reporting on the investigation into the slaying of prominent business executive Richard Oland

Long Feature

• Jim Coyle, Toronto Star, for "The Wreck I Was," a searing first-person account of an alcoholic's descent into booze and hard-won recovery
• Don Gillmor, Toronto Star, for "Losing David," an intensely personal story about coming to grips with the suicide of a loved one
• Jon Wells, Hamilton Spectator, for "Life and Death in the ICU," a feature that took readers into the heart of one of Canada's busiest intensive-care units for trauma, cardiac and neurological treatment

Multimedia Feature

• Montreal La Presse team for "Ces Routes Qui Tuent," about the troubling and often fatal impact of unsafe roads in Quebec
• Craig Pearson, Trevor Wilhelm and Dan Janisse, Windsor Star, for "The Way of the Gun," about a police operation that brought down a gun smuggling ring
• Toronto Star team for "Known to Police," about the intersection of policing practices and race in Canada's biggest city

News Feature Photo

• Moe Doiron, Globe and Mail, for a picture of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford sitting alone in council chambers, wearing a Toronto Argonauts jersey
• Frank Gunn, Canadian Press, for a shot of a woman diving head-first through the passenger seat window into her car on a flooded Toronto street
• Steve Russell, Toronto Star, for an image of two couples enjoying Toronto's Gay Pride parade from a vantage point above street level

News Photo

• Shaughn Butts, Edmonton Journal, for an image of an unconscious young victim being carried from a fire
• Lucas Oleniuk, Toronto Star, for a shot of Filipino soldiers filling a mass grave dug in the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan
• Jordan Verlage, Canadian Press, for a picture of a man and his pet cat swimming to safety after the Highwood River overflowed its banks in High River, Alta.

Politics

• Steven Chase, Boyd Erman and Daniel Leblanc, Globe and Mail, for stories exploring the role of Prime Minister Stephen Harper's advisor Nigel Wright in the Mike Duffy Senate expense scandal
• Jennifer Ditchburn, Canadian Press, for coverage of Senator Mike Duffy's expense claims, including revelations that Duffy had been campaigning for the Conservatives on days when he claimed expenses for Senate business
• Gary Mason, Globe and Mail, for a play-by-play analysis of how the B.C. Liberal party turned its fortunes around to win the last provincial election

Presentation

• Jason Chiu, Globe and Mail
• Nuri Ducassi, Zach Scott and Sarah Murdoch, Toronto Star
• Brian Hughes, Toronto Star

Project of the Year

• Globe and Mail for a series of stories that measured and analysed the real impact of income inequality in Canada
• Halifax Chronicle Herald for a series of stories investigating the worrisome state of long-term care in Nova Scotia
• Toronto Star for a series of stories that explored connections between the clothes on Canadians' backs and a tragic building collapse half a world away
• Vancouver Province for a series of stories exploring racism in the increasingly multicultural Lower Mainland

Short Feature

• Gabrielle Duchaine, Montreal La Presse, for story about eight severely disabled adults whose group home was on the verge of being shut down
• Grant Robertson, Globe and Mail, for a story that went inside the tightly controlled U.S. oil industry to investigate the crude oil being carried by a train that crashed in Lac-Mégantic, Que., killing 47 people
• Gordon Sinclair Jr., Winnipeg Free Press, for a profile of a child-like man who spent most of his 83 years in care facilities yet achieved a life full of happiness and purpose

Sports

• Jon McCarthy, Toronto Sun, for three stories about the U.S. Open golf tournament
• Caroline Touzin, Montreal La Presse, for a three-part profile of boxer Adonis Stevenson
• Randy Turner, Winnipeg Free Press, for stories about unregulated hockey leagues for elite young players, the future of curling in rural Manitoba, and hockey players' unhealthy habit of chewing tobacco

Sports Photo

• Amber Bracken, Edmonton Sun, for a blood-spattered picture of two female boxers
• Jonathan Hayward, Canadian Press, for a low-angle view of a curler peering intently through the arms and legs of his sweepers
• Darren Stone, Victoria Times Colonist, for a photo of an apparently headless hockey player

SOURCE: National Newspaper Awards

For more information, go to www.nna-ccj-ca or contact:

Paul Woods, Editorial Consultant
National Newspaper Awards
[email protected]
905 681-8675 (office)
647 606-8687 (mobile)