Serge Chapleau of La Presse and Stephanie Nolen of the Globe and Mail tied the record for lifetime wins when the 2019 National Newspaper Awards were announced yesterday.
Chapleau won for the eighth time in the Editorial Cartooning category, while Nolen’s win (alongside two Globe and Mail colleagues) in the Business category was also the eighth of her career. Over the years Nolen has been a winner in four categories: Arts and Entertainment, Business, Explanatory Work and International. She has been a finalist 17 times while Chapleau has been a finalist 15 times.
Their eighth wins matched a record that had been held by Jacquie McNish, who won eight times between 1992 and 2015.
Randy Richmond of the London Free Press was named 2019 Journalist of the Year. That selection was made by a panel of three former NNA winners from among winning entries that had been submitted by one or two individuals.
Richmond also won the Local Reporting category, and was a finalist in the Investigations category, for “We are the cops,” a series of stories exposing how a police officer punched, kicked, stomped and choked a woman, how his fellow officers failed to stop the abuse, and how police spun it all into a misleading story about a dangerous suspect who had assaulted an officer.
Judges noted that extraordinary journalistic efforts over nearly two years were needed to bring the incident to light. They included a lengthy battle after the officer charged in the case sought an injunction prohibiting publication of key information. Richmond also overcame obstacles to track down the victim’s lawyer for an important interview conducted as the man was in palliative care, facing death because of a brain tumour.
The Globe and Mail won eight of the 21 category awards. La Presse and the Ottawa Citizen each won three, while Le Devoir and the Toronto Star won two apiece. Other awards were won by the Winnipeg Free Press, London Free Press and (with its first-ever win) the Athletic.
There were 63 finalists from 19 organizations in 21 categories. Finalists were selected by three-judge panels in each category from 774 entries submitted for work published in 2019.
To read more about this year’s winners, please click here.
