CBC News wins CJF Jackman Award for Excellence in Journalism

TORONTO, June 16, 2016 /CNW/ - CBC News is this year's recipient of the CJF Jackman Award for Excellence in Journalism in the large-media category. CBC News won the honour at the annual Canadian Journalism Foundation Awards based on the following stories:

"Missing & Murdered: Unsolved cases of indigenous women and girls" 
"Families of missing and murdered indigenous women give police a failing grade" 
"Family prays for justice 12 years after Felicia Solomon's remains found in Red River"

"This is CBC at its best, telling these deeply personal stories with insight and dignity, and making the project even richer by knitting together its reportorial and production resources on every platform," says Trina McQueen, a jury member and longtime broadcast executive, who is now adjunct professor in the Arts and Media department of the Schulich School of Business at York University. "The direct involvement of indigenous journalists added to the depth and authenticity of the reporting."

Named after CJF founder Eric Jackman, this annual award honours an organization that embodies exemplary journalistic standards and practices with a resulting positive impact on the community it serves. The finalists in the large media category were 16x9 (Global News), The Globe and Mail, Maclean's and the Toronto Star.

In the small-media category, the Telegraph-Journal, based in Saint John, N.B., won the CJF Jackman Award for Excellence in Journalism for "Tracking Daycare Deficiencies." Metro Ottawa, National Observer (Vancouver), Toronto Life and The Tyee (Vancouver) were finalists.

The CJF Innovation Award, which recognizes creative new approaches to advance the quality of journalism, went to Discourse Media, a Vancouver-based independent media company that produces in-depth journalism about complex issues using collaborative approaches. During last year's Vancouver transportation funding referendum, Discourse Media obtained, analyzed and produced data that helped readers—among other things—to calculate the cost of their commutes in its "Moving Forward" project. CBC North and The Globe and Mail were finalists for this award, now in its second year.

This was the CJF's largest sold-out event, with more than 600 journalists, media executives and business leaders from across the country gathered at the Fairmont Royal York in Toronto to celebrate excellence in journalism. Anna Maria Tremonti, host of CBC Radio's The Current, hosted the event.  

Among the evening's other award winners:

• The CJF Aboriginal Journalism Fellowships aim to foster better comprehension of Aboriginal issues in Canada's major media and community outlets. The awards are offered to two Aboriginal journalists with one to 10 years of experience, who spend a month at CBC News's Aboriginal Centre in Winnipeg. This year's fellows are Stephanie Cram, a Métis multimedia journalist in Winnipeg, who plans to investigate issues that people in remote First Nations' communities face when trying to access health services, and Trevor Jang, a reporter and content creator at Roundhouse Radio 98.3 in Vancouver, who will explore issues of indigenous identity and reconciliation, an idea triggered in part by the decision at an All-Native Basketball Tournament to ban a participant based on his ancestry, despite his being adopted at birth by the Heiltsuk First Nation. Jang, from the Laksilyu (Small Frog) Clan of the Wet'suwet'en Nation in northwestern British Columbia, is also Chinese-Canadian. The fellowships are presented in partnership with CBC News and supported by the RBC Foundation, CN, CJF honorary governor Rosemary Speirs and Isabel Bassett, former chair and CEO of TVO.
  
  
• The Landsberg Award, presented in association with the Canadian Women's Foundation, celebrates a journalist giving greater profile to women's equality issues. Named after noted journalist and social activist Michele Landsberg, the award comes with a $5,000 prize. Two winners—and three people—were selected in recognition of the year's exceptional coverage of women's equality issues. The Radio-Canada Enquête duo of journalist Josée Dupuis and producer/director Emmanuel Marchand was one winner, for their investigative work on sexual abuse of indigenous women by police in the Quebec town of Val d'Or, while the other was Catherine Porter, a columnist and feature writer with the Toronto Star, whose columns explored systemic issues such as women murdered by their partners.
  
  
• The Atkinson Fellowship in Public Policy provides a seasoned Canadian journalist with $100,000 and an opportunity to pursue a year-long investigation into a current policy issue. It is sponsored by the Atkinson Foundation, the Toronto Star and the Honderich family. This year's recipient is Catherine Wallace, a freelance reporter who has worked for more than three decades in the newspaper industry in Toronto and Montreal. For her fellowship, she plans to explore if the answer to the future of the newspaper business model lies in building partnerships within communities.
  
  
• The Greg Clark Award, sponsored by Shaw Communications and the Toronto Star, provides the opportunity for an early-career journalist to explore an issue in depth for one week. Winner Jayme Poisson, an investigative reporter with the Toronto Star, proposed splitting her time between the Ontario Information and Privacy Commissioner Office and the federal Office of the Information Commissioner to explore how they deal with access-to-information requests.
  
  
• The Tom Hanson Photojournalism Award, presented with The Canadian Press and supported by Nikon, went to Eduardo Lima, a Toronto-based freelance photographer. This award provides an early-career photojournalist with the opportunity to spend six weeks with The Canadian Press head office in Toronto.
  
  
• The William Southam Journalism Fellowships, which reward mid-career journalists with an academic year to audit courses in the discipline of their choice and to participate fully in life at Massey College, are awarded annually by the University of Toronto and Massey College. This year's five winners are:
  
  • Rodney Sieh, the founder and editor of Liberia's largest online and print newspaper, FrontPageAfrica, is the recipient of the Gordon N. Fisher/jhr Fellowship, awarded in partnership with Journalists for Human Rights and named after Gordon N. Fisher who, along with St. Clair Balfour of Southam Newspapers, created the fellowships in 1962;
  • Katie Daubs, a feature reporter with the Toronto Star, who received the St. Clair Balfour Fellowship;
  • Hugo de Grandpré, a reporter with La Presse, who received the Webster/McConnell Fellowship:
  • Martine Laberge, a reporter with CBC/Radio-Canada, who received the CBC/Radio-Canada Fellowship; and
  • James Lebans, a reporter for CBC/Radio-Canada's Quirks & Quarks, who received the inaugural McLaughlin Centre Science Fellowship.

The previously announced Lifetime Achievement Award went to Lloyd Robertson, in recognition of a distinguished career in broadcast journalism spanning more than five decades, and counting. The longtime anchor of CTV National News, Robertson is currently host and chief correspondent of W5, CTV's investigative news program.

The annual CJF Tribute recipients were Tina Brown, former editor of Vanity Fair and The New Yorker best known for injecting her signature mix of high-brow and popular culture into magazines, in honour of her remarkable career shaping the cultural media landscape; and Harold Evans, the former editor of the Sunday Times in London, in honour of an exceptional career with significant impact. Among his achievements: campaigning for a just settlement and an apology for British Thalidomide victims.

The CJF presented a Special Citation to The Boston Globe Spotlight Team, for exemplary investigative journalism. The reporting team won a Pulitzer Prize in 2003 for its investigative series exposing widespread child abuse by numerous priests and the systemic cover-up by the Catholic Church in Boston. Globe reporters Sacha Pfeiffer and Michael Rezendes, along with the editor who led the investigation, Walter V. Robinson, accepted the award on behalf of the team. The Spotlight Team's courageous journalism was portrayed in the movie Spotlight, which won best picture and best original screenplay at this year's Academy Awards.

The CJF thanks presenting sponsor CN, along with the following organizations for their support of this event: RBC, BMO Financial Group, Labatt Breweries of Canada, Accenture, Medtronic, Scotiabank, Shaw Communications, Barrick Gold Corporation, the Jackman Foundation, Manulife, Rogers, Ivanhoé Cambridge, Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, Thomson Reuters, Canadian Bankers Association, and Tom Kierans and Mary Janigan.

Thank you also to The Globe and Mail, Maclean's, Metro, National Post, Toronto Star, CBC News, CNW, CPAC, The Canadian Press, iPolitics and Porter for their in-kind support.

#CJFawards

About The Canadian Journalism Foundation
Established in 1990, The Canadian Journalism Foundation promotes excellence in journalism by celebrating outstanding journalistic achievement. Our signature events include an annual awards program featuring a must-attend industry gala where Canada's top newsmakers meet Canada's top news people. Through J-Talks, our popular speakers' series, we facilitate dialogue among journalists, business people, academics and students about the role of the media in Canadian society and the ongoing challenges for media in the digital era. The foundation also supports journalism websites J-Source.ca (English) and ProjetJ.ca (French) and fosters opportunities for journalism education, training and research.

SOURCE Canadian Journalism Foundation

Media Contact Information: Wendy Kan, The Canadian Journalism Foundation, Phone: [phone], e-mail: [email protected], www.cjf-fjc.ca