Manotick Messenger’s From the Other Side named top column in province

The Manotick Messenger has had another big year at the 2022 Ontario Community Newspaper Association’s annual Better Newspaper Competition.

The annual competition is judged by some of the top journalists and professors in the country. The best submissions from among the more than 200 community newspapers in the province are judged each year. The top three finalists in each category were named in February, with the winners announced last Friday.

The judging window for the 2022 awards was for material published between Sept. 2021 and Sept. 2022.

Jeff Morris was named the OCNA Columnist of the Year for his ‘From the Other Side’ column, which runs on page 6 in the Manotick Messenger. It marks the second time he has been named the top columnist in the province. He is also a two-time Ontario humour columnist of the year award, and a twotime winner of the Stephen Shaw Award as Ontario’s Reporter of the Year. He has been among the three finalists for either the Column of the Year or Humour Column of the Year awards in 13 of the last 16 years.

Chris Foulds, editor of Kamloops This Week and a former Columnist of the Year in BC, called Morris’s From the Other Side columns “well written columns that flow extremely well. And the topics are compelling.”

Jim Poling of the Minden Times was second in the category, while Laurie Weir of the Perth Courier was third.

A feature story written by Morris was a finalist in two categories.

In November, 2021, the Manotick Messenger ran a feature story on the connection in Manotick and surrounding area to notorious gangster Al Capone. The feature story was brought to the Messenger’s attention after the demolition of the Manotick Tea Room by the building’s former owner, Chris Napior. The story was centered around the Tea Room, a distillery in the woods near the Prescott railroad in Manotick Station, the connection of J. Edgar Hoover to the Village of Osgoode, and how moonshine was taken by boat across the St. Lawrence River from Prescott to Ogdensburg.

The story also detailed the discover of musical instruments and equipment found in the Manotick Tea Room. The equipment belonged to world famous drummer Gene Krupa, who was a relative of former Manotick Tea Room owners Peter and Tess

Krupa.

The feature placed second in the province for Best Heritage Story.

Chris Clegg, editor of the South Peace News in High Prairie, Alberta, judged the category. Clegg said he “could not pull himself away from this story. A terrific read, well done!”

Ashley Kulp of the Carleton Place/Almonte Canadian Gazette placed first in the category, while Cory Bilyea of the Wingham Advance Times was third.

The Al Capone feature placed third in the Best Feature Story category.

“The many stories which centered around the Manotick Tea Room were given a full airing in this very interesting feature,” said category judge Frank Bucholtz, a retired editor from Black Media and the Langley Times in BC. “Figures such as Al

Capone, J. Edgar Hoover and Gene Krupa make this story a fascinating read.”

Since 2006, the Manotick Messenger and Morris have won more than 70 provincial newspaper awards, more than any other journalist and news- paper in Ontario. Last year, Jeff Morris was inducted into the Ontario Community Newspaper Association Hall of Fame along with his father, John, his uncle, Robin and his grandfather, Jack, who were inducted posthumously.