MONTREAL, May 30, 2022 /CNW/ - So strong was the field for a new journalism award in the field of young people's mental health, a jury has awarded two equal, full-value first prizes.
One went to a team from The Toronto Star and the Investigative Journalism Bureau, at the University of Toronto for a series of four articles published last year in the Star. The other was awarded to a pair of freelancers who collaborated on a 7,000-word article with multi-media for The Walrus.
"The extraordinary interest in the new English and French awards for reporting on the mental health pressures on children, youth and young adults is very encouraging," said Forum president Cliff Lonsdale. "There were 34 entries, with 16 individuals named among the finalists. Clearly, a growing number of journalists understand the importance of well-focused, well-informed journalism in this key area."
Across the Mindset Awards and their French equivalents, les Prix En-Tête, the awards honoured 22 journalists and other team members. Nine such prizes were presented this weekend at a national awards gala hosted in Montreal by the Canadian Association of Journalists.
The full list of awards for work published or broadcast in 2021:
First prize:
Tom Murphy, Linda Guerriero, Rachel Ward, Patrick Callaghan, Liz Rosch and Loretta Hicks at CBC's The Fifth Estate, for Broken Honour, an investigation into how military police and justice officials allow cases of sexual misconduct to go unpunished, and the mental health consequences; broadcast March 12, 2021.
Honourable Mention:
Nadine Yousif, mental health reporter for The Toronto Star, for Stressed and overworked, nurses hailed as 'health-care heroes' are struggling to find help, published February 8, 2021.
Two First Prizes:
Robert Cribb with Morgan Bockneck (Toronto Star) and Charlie Buckley, Giulia Fiaoni, Declan Keogh, Radha Kohly, Liam G. McCoy and Danielle Orr (Investigative Journalism Bureau at the University of Toronto) for the 2021 part of a two-year collaborative series Generation Distress, published in The Toronto Star on February 19, March 15, April 26 and November 21, 2021.
And...
Simon Lewsen with photographer Chloē Ellingson for Inside the Mental Health Crisis Facing College and University Students, a 7,000-word article with photographic portraits and multi-media, published in The Walrus October 26, 2021.
HONOURABLE MENTION:
Odette Auger, freelance reporter from British Columbia, for Gentle truth telling: How to talk to our youngest community members about residential schools, published in Windspeaker on July 8, 2021.
FIRST PRIZE:
Angie Landry for Parler du suicide pour la suite du monde, published online by Radio-Canada on March 10, 2021. It highlighted how the psychological strains imposed on social workers by the COVID pandemic were worse than those of health care workers in the field of "physical health".
HONOURABLE MENTION:
Isabelle Burgun for Le Milieu communautaire ébranlé par la pandémie in Agence Science-Presse on July 26, 2021. The story detailed how support organizations for the most disadvantaged struggled to maintain the social safety net during the pandemic.
FIRST PRIZE:
Caroline Touzin for Une pandèmie dans la tête, in La Presse on June 12, 2021. She was the only journalist in Quebec to immerse herself in a psychiatric unit in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis, to detail the impacts of public health measures on the mental health of adolescents there.
HONOURABLE MENTION:
Florence Morin-Martel for Peut-on la garder en vie, s'il vous plaït ? in La Presse on October 12, 2021. The story highlighted a mother's complaint that her 15-year-old daughter with depression could not access treatment for it - even though she was "a real ticking time-bomb" - because she is also on the autism spectrum.
The awards are named for a Canada's only journalist-to-journalist guides to mental health reporting, produced by the Forum, which have become established leaders in their field with more than 13,000 copies distributed free over the past eight years to newsrooms, individual journalists and journalism schools. The guides are supported by the Mental Health Commission of Canada, with funds from Health Canada. The Forum is responsible for the content.
The well-established Mindset and En-Tête awards for workplace mental health reporting, are administered by the Forum and sponsored by Workplace Strategies for Mental Health, compliments of Canada Life, which offers itself as a resource for journalists working in that field.
The new Mindset and En-Tête awards for reporting on the mental health of young people, are administered by the Forum and sponsored by the Canadian Mental Health Association.
All winners are chosen by independent juries from finalists selected by the Forum.
The Canadian Journalism Forum on Violence and Trauma is a charity dedicated to the physical safety and mental well-being of journalists, their audiences and the people on whom they report. We acknowledge the support of the Globe and Mail, CBC News and Radio-Canada for aspects of our work not related to these awards. Our thanks to Cision/CNW for sponsoring this announcement.
SOURCE Canadian Journalism Forum on Violence and Trauma
For more information about the awards, please go to https://www.mindset-mediaguide.ca; contact Jane Hawkes, Executive Producer, Canadian Journalism Forum on Violence and Trauma, 519 852-4946 / [email protected]
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