Awards 2015

MEDIA

T HE C A N A D I A N A SSOCIAT ION OF JOURN A LIS TS • L’A S S O CIATIO N CA N A D IEN N E D ES J O U R NAL I ST E S 2015 AWARD S ED ITIO N • V O L.17, N O . 5

T E R R O R I N O T TAWA The Halifax Chronicle Herald’s editorial was a top award-winner in 2015

2015 AWARDS EDITION • VOLUME 17, NUMBER FIVE

MEDIA Table of contents

MEDIA A PUBLICATION OF

THE CANADIAN ASSOCIATION OF JOURNALISTS L’ASSOCIATION CANADIENNE DES JOURNALISTES EDITOR

David McKie 1-613-290-7380

LEGAL ADVISOR

Peter Jacobsen, Bersenas Jacobsen Chouest Thomson Blackburn LL P

ART DIRECTION and DESIGN David McKie

THE CONTRIBUTORS Britney Dennison, Bruce MacKinnon, Charles Rusnell, Enza Uda, Dave Seglins, Jesse McLean, John Lehmann, Jon Wells, Kevin Rollason, Kim Bolan, Ric Esther Bienstock, Shelley Page, Stan Behal, Teri Pecoskie, Jim Coyle, Trina Roache

PHOTO AT THE TOP OF THE PAGE: SCARRED FOR LIFE: The black market can expose organ sellers and recipients to sub-standard medical practice.

PHOTO CREDIT: Associated Producers

TABLE OF CONTENTS: Page 8 CAJ - DON MCGILLIVRAY AWARD AND COMMUNITY BROADCAST THE AURA OF POWER: CBC Edmonton’s Charles Rusnell explains how he and Jennie Russell used freedom-of-information requests, sources and lots of shoe leather to expose the spending that ultimately forced Alison Redford to resign as premier of Alberta.

Page 10 CAJ – TEXT FEATURE A FATHER’S WORST NIGHTMARE: Amos Mustapha had not seen his teen daughter since wishing her good luck just before her final exam. Jesse McLean describes the kidnapping, the pain and the hope for a happy ending.

Page 12 CAJ – OPEN BROADCAST FEATURE TRAFFICKING IN KIDNEYS: Ric Esther Bienstock tells the stories of people on both sides of the international kidney trade debate.

Page 16 CAJ – OPEN BROADCAST NEWS SPEAKING OUT: A 21-year-old fast-food worker from B.C. became the reluctant whistleblower whose story forced McDonalds to change the way it uses temporary foreign workers. By Enza Uda Page 18 CAJ - CWA CANADA / CAJ AWARD FOR LABOUR REPORTING EXHAUSTION ON THE RAILS: Locomotive operators opened about falling asleep at the controls. By Dave Seglins

COVER PHOTO: COMPASSIONATE COMRADES COME TO LIFE: Cpl. Nathan Cirillo, a reservist who was guarding the National War Memorial outside the Parliament buildings in Ottawa, was shot and killed in a terror attack on Oct. 22, 2014, that ended in a fatal shoot-out on Parliament Hill.

PHOTO CREDIT: Bruce MacKinnon -- The Chronicle Herald, Halifax, N.S.

PHOTO AT THE TOP OF THE PAGE: THE FORGOTTEN MAN: Robert Sinclair holds a portrait of his first cousin Brian Sinclair at a news conference. Brian Sinclair, a disabled aboriginal man, died in Sept. 2008, after waiting 34 hours in the emergency room of the Health Sciences Centre in Winnipeg PHOTO CREDIT: WAYNE.GLOWACKI/Winnipeg Free Press

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2015 AWARDS EDITION

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2015 AWARDS EDITION • VOLUME 16, NUMBER FOUR

Page 20 CAJ – ONLINE MEDIA CHARTING CHINA’S GREEN REVOLUTION: You’d never guess it from the country’s infamous smog-filled cities, but green activists are pushing for cleaner air – and getting results. By Britney Dennison Page 22 CAJ – PHOTOJOURNALISM The Globe and Mail’s John Lehmann explains how a fish bowl allowed him to get up close to spawning salmon.

Page 24 CAJ – JHR/ CAJ AWARD FOR HUMAN RIGHTS REPORTING THE JORDAN’S PRINCIPLE: The policy to treat indigenous disabled children was sorely lacking. By Trina Roache Page 26 NNA – EDITORIAL CARTOONING AND JOURNALIST OF THE YEAR COMPASSIONATE COMRADES COME TO L IFE: Chronicle Herald editorial cartoonist, Bruce MacKinnon, looks back at how he sketched the cartoon that captured a compassionate spirit in the aftermath of the fatal attack at the National War Memorial.

Page 28 NNA – MULTIMEDIA FEATURE AND CAJ / MARKETWIRED DATA JOURNALISM AWARD A DEEP DIVE INTO EDUCATION: Teri Pecoskie used data to tell stories about student achievment.

Page 30 NNA – SPORTS TWO TEAMS, TWO DREAMS: The Toronto Star profiled two hockey teams where the dream of making it to the NHL survives the obscurity, heartache – and the occasional harrowing road trip. By Jim Coyle Page 32 NNA – INVESTIGATIONS AND CAJ OPEN MEDIA CATEGORY PROFILING A KILLER: The Hamilton Spectator’s Jon Wells found out what makes one of the city’s most notorious murderers tick – and why he sports a tattoo of the word “Remorseless”.

Page 34 NNA – EXPLANATORY WORK THE INEXPLICABLE DEATH OF BRIAN SINCLAIR: How could someone die in the waiting room of Winnipeg’s busiest hospital emergency department after waiting 34 hours for treatment? The Winnipeg Press’ Kevin Rollason dug for answers.

Page 36 NNA – BEAT REPORTING COVERING THE BAD GUYS: The Vancouver Sun’s intrepid crime reporter, Kim Bolan, takes on the city’s gangs – and cops.

Page 38 NNA – SHORT FEATURE REMEMBERING POLYTECHNIQUE: Former newspaper reporter, Shelley Page, conducts a postmortem of the original piece she wrote about the Dec. 6, 1989, shooting of 14 female engineering students. Her verdict? She got it all wrong.

Page 40 NNA – SPORTS PHOTOGRAPHY THE AGONY OF DEFEAT: Toronto Sun photographer Stan Behal says the best shots can come from from covering the losers.

Visit online for details about how to apply and enter.

PHOTOS AT THE TOP: REMEMBERING POLYTECHNIQUE: (From left the right) Anne-Marie Edward, Anne-Marie Lemay, Annie St-Arnaud, Annie Turcotte, Barbara Daigneault, Barbara Lkucznik, Geneviève Bergeron, Helen Colgan, Maryse Laganière, Maryse Leclair, Maud Haviernick, Michèle Richard, Nathalie Croteau, Sonia Pelletier

michenerawards.ca

PHOTO CREDITS: Ecole Polytechnique 4 MEDIA

2015 AWARDS EDITION

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THE JORDAN PRINCIPLE’S PROMISE OF COMPASSIONATE CARE: Maurina Beadle and her son Jeremy Meawasige live on the Pictou Landing First Nation in Nova Scotia. The Aboriginal Peoples Network chronicled their plight in “Outside the circle”

The First Word

In praise of award-winning journalism

By David McKie

E

very year Media magazine devotes an entire issue to award-winners whose accounts of how they got their stories offer us hope, inspiration and practical advice in an age of debilitating cutbacks, shrinking news holes and diminishing editorial resources.

And once again the contributors, who interrupted their busy schedules to share their backstories, didn’t disappoint.

It should also be noted that the winners were chosen from an outstanding roster of finalists, who receive shout-outs with links to their stories we encourage you to read.

The stories that took the top prizes for the Canadian Association of Journalists and the National Newspaper Awards were noteworthy for many reasons.

For instance, it was the first time that newspaper judges crowned an editorial cartoon as the National Newspaper Awards Journalist of the Year.

The Halifax Chronicle Herald’s Bruce MacKinnon depicted the dramatic aftermath of a shooting near Parliament Hill.

So let’s start with MacKinnon’s backstory.

Oct. 22, 2014, started out like any other day for the editorial cartoonist, who has plied his trade at the Halifax Chronicle Herald for 29 years.

Not partial to crafting cartoons about murder and mayhem, his first impulse was to ignore the events making news in the nation’s capital.

However, it soon became clear that the drama was too important to dismiss. After consultations with colleagues and lastminute decision-making, he settled on an

idea that turned out to be the right call: the depiction of fatally wounded honour guard, Nathan Cirillo, being aided by one of the statutes on the war monument, which is also featured on Media magazine’s cover.

In this case, it is fair to say that MacKinnon’s editorial cartoon spoke more loudly than words.

But words did speak loudly in newspapers, on websites, and on television and radio broadcasts, telling stories that shaped public policy, raised awareness, ignited discussions and held politicians to account.

When it comes to the latter, it’s only fitting to shift to Alberta.

The Canadian Association of Journalist’s overall winners were CBC Edmonton’s I-unit members, Charles Rusnell and Jennie Russell, for “Aura of Power”, an account of the questionable expenses that led to the downfall of former Alberta Premier Alison Redford.

The dynamic duo uses old-fashioned shoe-leather reporting fuelled by provincial freedom-of-information requests to break stories like “Skypalace” that appeared on television, radio and online.

“At any given time, we have about 150 active requests,” explains Rusnell in his write-up on page eight.

“In the case of Skypalace, our source told us to request the communications between Redford’s executive assistant and the architect responsible for the penthouse.

We filed six separate requests to two departments, which yielded the documents that underpinned the story and made it

irrefutable.”

Also refutable is the controversy over organ donations and the desperation that sets in among individuals whose very lives depend on finding a new kidney to replace the old one.

“Tales from the Organ Trade” explored grey and uncertain middle ground that sits uncomfortably between the two extremes.

“The picture that emerged was not black-and-white”, explains filmmaker Ric Esther Bienstock about her award-winning documentary, “but rather, a nuanced and complex story that forced me to question my own moral and ethical assumptions.”

In her quest to help us appreciate the challenges of spinning such a nuanced tale, Bienstock uses her write-up to give us a peek inside the world of a filmmaker, whose never-ending quest for the right characters, and the travel money to interview them, determines the quality of the final product, and in some instances, whether the film gets made at all. Bienstock’s journey of discovery took her around the world.

A little closer to home, the news stories of indigenous peoples have produced too much heartache and too-little discussion about ways to reconcile past injustices.

A story that deserves much more attention as we seemingly head into a new era of cooperation between the federal government and First Nations is the treatment of the disabled individuals on reserves.

In her bid to shed light on the issue, Trina Roache, a Halifax correspondent for Aboriginal Peoples Television Network, dug into the little-known Jordan’s Prin-

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ciple, a concept which promises that no disabled child in a First Nation community shall be left behind.

Sadly, what Roache discovered was federal- provincial buck-passing over who should do what.

As was the case with CBC Edmonton’s I-unit, Roache used a freedom-of-information law, this one at the federal level, to uncover crucial details that informed her reporting.

She profiled the plight of Maurina Beadle and her son Jeremy Meawasige who live on the Pictou Landing First Nation in Nova Scotia.

When a stroke debilitated Maurina in 2010, she needed extra help to take care of Jeremy at home. Unfortunately, the provincial and federal governments argued against footing the bill; that is, before a court set them straight.

The unfathomable plight of the disabled in the Aboriginal community was also front and centre in Kevin Rollason’s Winnipeg Free Press story of Brian Sinclair, a disabled aboriginal man who inexplicably became a forgotten man at the Health Sciences Centre in Winnipeg in September of 2008.

While Sinclair’s story was well-known, at least on a superficial level, it was left to a coroner’s inquest into his death to seek answers to a crucial question: why was he left to wait 34 hours in the Centre’s emergency room for a treatable bladder 2015 SPRING EDITION

infection?

When the doctors finally got around to seeing the patient who had been under the supervision of Manitoba’s Public Trustee Office, he had been dead for so long that rigor mortis was already setting in.

“During the days, weeks and months of the inquest ,” writes Rollason, “I began wondering about the 199 other patients who passed through the same emergency room doors that Sinclair went through, but who did receive treatment.”

His explanatory piece tackled some of those questions, thus providing context to a tragic event.

And tragedy also spurred Shelley Page to revisit an event that goes back even farther than 2008. In this case, the largest mass murder of women in Canadian history: the Dec. 6, 1989, massacre of engineering students at Montreal’s L’Ecole Polytechnique.

Page initially wrote a story about the massacre for her then-employer, Toronto Star.

But something about that original coverage nagged at her as the 25th anniversary of the mass killing approached.

Needing to revisit the original story, the people she did and didn’t interview, and the words she used to craft the piece, Page approached the Star to write a follow-up, a postmortem of her original story.

After not hearing back, she approached the Ottawa Citizen. Her former paper said, yes.

Page’s account is an intriguing evaluation of how her original story failed to honour the memories of the young women pictured at the top of page four.

“I turned the dead engineering students into sleeping beauties who received flowers from potential suitors,” she writes.

“I should have referred to the buildings they wouldn’t design, the machines they wouldn’t create and the products never imagined.”

However, it was not only words and editorial cartoons that won awards. Pictures did, too.

With the advent of digital cameras and Instagram accounts, it can become more difficult to appreciate the intricacies of snapping that one picture that seems to say it all.

In his account of how he got up close to spawning salmon along the banks of the Adams River in B.C.’s Roderick HaigBrown Park, Globe and Mail photographer John Lehmann explains how he used an empty fish tank ( yes, a fish tank) to bag the money shot.

And in his backstory of the shot that featured the desperate lunge of tennis star Gael Monfils, Toronto Sun photographer and tennis enthusiast, Stan Behal, explains how he used timing.

The result? A shot of the French player suspended in an act of acrobatic futility.

As Behal and many of the awardwinners explained, sometimes the most poignant moments come from those who lose, not those who win.

The award-winners’ accounts were intriguing, not only for their insight and backstories, but for the tips that they provided at the end of each account In general, they focused on the need to be dogged in the pursuit of truth, use freedom-of-information and access-toinformation laws to dig for documents and data, develop and nourish contacts, carve out space in busy schedules dominated never-ending assignments and crushing deadlines to research original stories, and write drafts before submitting the final version.

On that score, I’ll turn over the remaining space to the Toronto Star’s Jim Coyle, who gives this advice to students.

“There are no shortcuts. You have to read — a lot. And you have to write — a lot.

“I tell them that even after 35 years, I never send a first draft to the Star. I rewrite top to bottom, 10, 20, 30 times. “‘Coz as Hemingway said, the hard part of this biz is getting the words right.”

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CAJ - Don McGillivray Award and Community Broadcast Aura of Power CBC News Edmonton Charles Rusnell, Jennie Russell

By Charles Rusnell

I

n early 2014, it seems many people had heard the rumour a private penthouse apartment was being built for thenpremier Alison Redford at public expense.

We turned rumour into fact, and the story that became known as Redford’s “Skypalace” made national headlines. Under pressure from within her own caucus, Redford resigned as premier the week before the Skypalace documents were released to us.

Two weeks later, there was more public outrage after we broke the story of how Redford had flown her daughter on 50 government flights, including two holiday long weekends in Jasper.

In July, we published and broadcast our story of how Redford’s staff had booked fake passengers on government planes so she could fly with a chosen entourage.

Redford resigned her seat as an MLA eight days after the story appeared and a day before the auditor general released his official report.

Alberta Auditor General Merwan Saher coined the phrase that perhaps best captures the brief, troubled reign of Redford.

“Premier Redford used public assets (aircraft) for personal and partisan purposes. And Premier Redford was involved in a plan to convert public space in a public building into personal living space,” Saher wrote in his report, released in August.

“How could this have happened?

The answer is the aura of power around Premier Redford and her office and the perception that the influence of the office should not be questioned.”

We never, for a moment, questioned the need to challenge Redford’s “aura of power.” But we knew any investigation of a powerful politician had to be meticu-

lously planned, reported and verified.

We produced the stories through a combination of targeted freedom-of-information requests, enterprise thinking, carefully cultivated sources and most importantly, methodically planned and organized reporting.

Documents obtained through freedom of information produced the Skypalace story.

But we did not simply file a raft of fishingexpedition requests, hoping one might yield the documents.

As a full-time investigative unit, we extensively employ freedom of information to generate stories and maintain production. At any given time, we have about 150 active requests. Few are made on a hunch.

Instead, we look for a confidential source with direct knowledge of what we are investigating. Confidential sources may not be able, or willing, to speak on the record, but they can provide information which can be used to craft very specific requests both in terms of the information sought and the time frame.

In the case of Skypalace, our source told us to request the communications between Redford’s executive assistant and the architect responsible for the penthouse.

We filed six separate requests to two departments, which yielded the documents that underpinned the story and made it irrefutable.

Redford’s lavish travel had been making headlines for weeks when she publicly stated it was common knowledge she took her daughter on government flights.

Except it wasn’t common knowledge, something Jennie Russell immediately realized.

The list of passengers for government flights are posted online in Alberta. Rus-

sell manually pored over hundreds of pages of flight manifests and found 50 flights on which Redford had taken her daughter.

Two of those trips were on holiday long weekends in Jasper. We cross-referenced those trips with her posted expenses and found that on one weekend she stayed at the luxury Jasper Park Lodge, supposedly on government business. But after two full days of reporting, we could find no work Redford had done in Jasper that weekend.

Russell also noticed an unfamiliar name on one of the manifests; Angelita Escultero. We knew from a source that Redford’s family had a Filipino nanny.

Facebook searches revealed photos of Escultero with Redford’s daughter in front of the Alberta legislature and that she worked part-time at a fast-food restaurant in Calgary.

To make certain we had the right person, Russell determined when Escultero was scheduled to work at the restaurant, travelled to Calgary and approached her during her break. She confirmed she was Redford’s nanny and had flown on the government plane.

The draft auditor general’s report detailing the fake passengers scheme appeared in our anonymous tip inbox as an attachment.

The source had admired our previous work on Redford, and wanted this information to be made public so it couldn’t be watered down under political pressure, as the source had seen happen in the past.

But before we could publish or broadcast anything, we had to do two things: ensure the document was genuine and ensure the source would not be caught.

After several phone conversations,

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SPENDING ONTHE PUBLIC DIME: Redford’s lavish travel had been making headlines for weeks when she publicly stated it was common knowledge she took her daughter on government flights.

PHOTO CREDIT: Jason Franson/The Canadian Press we convinced the source to meet us at a fast-food restaurant where we verified the source’s identity and that the source would have access to the highly confidential document.

At the same meeting, we asked numerous questions to establish the document could not be traced back to the source.

Did the document reside on a server to which many people have access? How broadly distributed was the document?

Did the source use an office photocopier?

(Photocopiers create a record that may be tracked to a specific person.)

We ask these questions because we always think long-term; we want sources to remain in their jobs so as to hopefully provide us with more inside information in the future.

Getting the information is only the first step. Successful large-scale investigative reporting requires planning and organization. For every story, we produce a step-by-step plan which details how we will pursue it and how we produce it for all platforms.

We do this to improve efficiency and ensure accuracy, but also to document our work. This is crucial not only to meet our 2015 AWARDS EDITION

Finalists Alison Brunette Challenging hospital policy on medical marijuana use CBC Radio One – Quebec AM

employer’s journalistic standards, but also to satisfy the legal requirements of the modern due-diligence defence to libel and defamation.

And finally, for every story, we conduct line-by-line fact checking to ensure every word and statement is supported by documents and by our reporting.

Charles Rusnell and Jennie Russell are reporters with CBC Investigates, the investigative unit of CBC Edmonton. They can be reached at cbcinvestigates@cbc.ca.

LINKS TO OUR STORIES

Abigail Bimman Who cares?

CTV News Kitchener Natalie Clancy Working holiday nightmare CBC News Vancouver

Skypalace: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/alison-redford-ordered-penthouse-suite-in-federal-building-1.2589713 Daughter flights: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/ alison-redford-flew-daughter-on-dozensof-government-flights-1.2607362 Fake passengers: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/premier-alison-redford-s-flightshad-false-passengers-auditor-generalsays-1.2720906 9

CAJ – Text Feature

RUTH AMOS’ IDENTIFICATION CARD: The 19-year-old left her home the morning of April 14 to attend a government boarding school to write her final-year exams. She was among nearly 300 schoolgirls kidnapped that night when Boko Haram insurgents raided the school.

PHOTO CREDIT: Jesse McLean

A Daughter’s Disappearing Silhouette Toronto Star

A FATHER’S GRIEF: Amos Mustapha’s 19-yearold daughter, Ruth, was one of nearly 300 schoolgirls kidnapped from a Nigerian boarding school on April 14. “My greatest pain is the thought of my daughter: Where she is, what they have done to her,” he said.

PHOTO CREDIT: Jesse McLean

By Jesse McLean

I

t was April 2014 and the Toronto Star newsroom, like much of the world, was captivated by the heinous abduction of nearly 300 schoolgirls in northern Nigeria by the terror group Boko Haram.

With each passing day, it became increasingly apparent we needed to be on the ground to properly cover the story.

Over the course of two weeks in Nigeria, I filed eleven articles, culminating in a 2,800-word feature reconstruction of the midnight raid on the schoolhouse, and the reverberations the kidnapping had on the Chibok community, and the country.

To tell the story of the horrific kidnapping, the article focused on individuals in the days leading up to and following the abduction — a schoolgirl who bravely jumped from her captors’ truck before it rumbled its way deeper into forest; fathers, their attempts to rescue their daughters futile, left only with mementos their girls left behind; and a female student, afraid her school may soon be attacked itself.

Getting there My foreign experience to this point has been limited to what is sometimes viewed derisively as parachute journalism. I have dropped into countries in the days following a devastating natural disaster or an escalation in violence, and covered the fallout. In these instances, the daily challenge has not been convincing people to talk, but rather tasks that we often take for granted: Getting safely from Point

A to Point B, finding a stable Internet or satellite connection to file your dispatch, securing a place to stay in a hotspot overrun with international media.

In this case, the troubles began before leaving for the airport. Getting into Nigeria requires a visa — and getting a visa requires persistence and a bit of magic For journalists, the gatekeeper to get into the country has a Yahoo email account and rarely picks up her phone. After calling her a dozen times over three days and getting nowhere, I headed to Ottawa, where I talked my way into the Nigeria High Commission without an appointment and, after repeated sprints to a nearby Staples to print off the appropriate documents, I managed to convince the staff to grant an expedited visa. Had I not I shown up in person, I am not sure I would have ever received it.

On the ground Once in Nigeria, the fieldwork continued to be frustrating and sometimes dangerous. Air Canada lost my luggage, containing everything from my toothbrush to a flak jacket, for several days (thankfully, a colleague wisely advised me years ago to always carry your cash, camera and computer in your carry-on).

Later, on a roadside in a small town where I met the fathers of the missing girls, local police tried to shake us down, poking a loaded rifle at my chest.

I filed my first story within hours of ar-

riving in the capital, Abuja, using contacts I made before leaving. When covering these kinds of stories, I believe in hitting the ground running.

Knowing your editors will often expect a large feature wrapping things up, I talk to every one I can, stockpiling material that I can later use.

For example, a Nigerian researcher who had done some freelancing for the Star shared a phone number with a pastor in the community where the schoolhouse was raided. I gave him my local number, asking him to pass it on to others in the village.

Having the local pastor vouch for me, bereaved parents and relatives got in touch, which led to connecting with the fathers who agreed to sit down for hours to share their stories.

Hearing their stories Chibok is an isolated community in Borno, a volatile, northeastern state and the heartland of Boko Haram. Nigerians traveling to the town from nearby cities risked kidnapping or death. A foreign journalist would almost be courting it. While large U.S. news outlets traveled there or nearby, some with armored guards, the Star’s editors decided it was too reckless Instead, three fathers agreed to make the journey south to the more stable Nasawara state so they could tell their daughters’ stories.

Alongside the article, we printed an edi-

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tor’s note explaining that the Star had paid for the men’s travel expenses because we believed their story needed to be heard.

With translation from a fixer, I spoke to each man for two to three hours, something that would not have been possible by phone because of the country’s spotty cell network.

They shared mementos of their daughters that helped paint a portrait of the missing girls: school notebooks, photographs, a graduation dress that was never worn.

Doing the kind of in-depth interviewing required to reconstruct scenes was difficult when going through a translator, but I just focused on asking simple questions that would help them not just remember what happened, but how it looked, smelled, sounded.

Tip sheet Show up in person. It’s a lot harder for 2015 AWARDS EDITION

Text Feature Finalists Ethan Faber, Phil Hahn The Search for Ashley and Taylor CTV News Margaret Munro Trouble beneath our feet Postmedia News

an embassy to deny you a visa when it’s one form on a pile. Smile, be polite but persistent.

Get a local SIM card — but don’t always call from your local number. There were several instances where I got tips or interviews because it was easy to text or call a local number. However, government officials frequently would ignore calls from my local cell, so I would call them from a Canadian Skype number, which they, inexplicably, always answered.

When writing, chart out a roadmap so you can figure out the narrative arc before you start writing. The added bonus is this allows you to write in smaller chunks, turning a daunting 3,000-word feature into much more manageable 500-word chunks.

Jesse McLean is a staff reporter with the Toronto Star’s investigative team. He can be reached at jmclean@thestar.ca.

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CAJ – Open Broadcast Feature

SCARRED FOR LIFE: The black market potentially exposes both the organ sellers AND the recipients to abuse and to sub-standard medical practice.

PHOTO CREDIT: Associated Producers

Tales from the Organ Trade Associated Producers Ltd. / Shaw Media Ric Esther Bienstock, Felix Golubev, Simcha Jacobovici

By Ric Esther Bienstock

W

hen I set out to make Tales From the Organ Trade I thought I was embarking on a black-and-white story of desperation and exploitation. There have been countless films, articles and reports about the black market organ trade and all of them tell the same sensational story: affluent First World patients in dire need of a kidney, travel to the Third World to buy an organ from an impoverished, but equally desperate, victim. These black market operations take place in countries like India, Pakistan, China, Columbia, Egypt, the Philippines, Turkey and Russia.

But when the illicit organ trade gets shut down in one country, it inevitably pops up in another.

The patients come from the U.S., Canada, Europe and the Middle East – anywhere where people have the money and wherewithal to seek out a black market transplant. My team and I travelled around the world – to Kosovo, Turkey, Israel, Ukraine, Moldova the Philippines, the U.S. and Canada – and met with organ brokers, transplant surgeons, victims, recipients, lawmakers and ethicists.

The picture that emerged was not black-and-white, but rather, a nuanced and complex story that forced me to question my own moral and ethical assumptions.

The black market in human organs is dominated by the selling of kidneys. There are two reasons for this. First, kidney transplantation is an operation that has become relatively routine, and can be performed easily in hospitals and clinics without state-of-theart facilities.

Second, we are born with two kidneys. If we’re healthy, we can survive with one. Many operations take place in private clinics, like the one we filmed in Kosovo. But many take place in established hospitals with respected surgeons who seem to turn a blind eye to the fact that money is changing hands. It is very easy for someone to skirt the rules regarding compensation when receiving or “donating” a kidney.

The World Health Organization claims that, every 60 minutes, somewhere in the world, a human organ is sold on the black market. I strongly suspect that estimate is low. There is simply no way to track how many people are being compensated. I also

Producer director Ric Esther Bienstock (middle) with producer Felix Golubev (right) filming in Prishtina, Kosovo

discovered that this is not only a Third World phenomenon. We met someone who sold his kidney on Craigslist.

Most of us intuitively feel that purchasing a kidney is wrong.

The consensus from the medical establishment, the World Health Organization and medical ethicists, is that buying an organ is immoral and exploitative. News reports describe these transactions as coercive and throw around terms like organ harvesting, kidney cartels and cannibalism. Without any analysis or context, that would be the end of the story. But there’s a more complicated story to tell that digs a little deeper and doesn’t have as resolute a point of view. I wanted Tales From the Organ Trade to tell that story.

Desperation in the black market This is a story where law-abiding citizens desperate to live, turn to the black market for a life-saving transplant, where the victims living in abject poverty, are driven to use their bodies as a bank book. Where the medical establishment, helpless on account of the shortage of organs, all too often watches people die and where the villains often save lives.

To really understand how the organ trade works, we needed to access all the players involved -- the brokers, doctors, surgeons, recipients and donors. It took over two years to find the stories that would provide a complete picture. I followed two North Americans, Mary Jo and Walter, both desperate for a kidney.

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Their stories put a human face on the difficulties of living on dialysis and the harsh reality of what it’s like to be on a waiting list that is not transparent and brutally slow.

We filmed in the Philippines, one of the hot spots for organ trafficking at the time. Organ selling is so widespread in certain areas that the brokers don’t have to recruit – donors are lining up at their doors.

In Manila, we followed a young man trying to sell his kidney.

His dream was to move his family out of an urban slum into a small house in the countryside where he could farm and raise chickens. But his broker was spooked by our cameras and at the last minute told him the operation was cancelled. In fact, she swapped him for another donor with the same blood type.

Instead of feeling like I had “saved” him, I felt I’d robbed him of his one chance at a better life. I was surprised and uncomfortable with my own reaction. That’s when I decided that I wanted to take viewers on the same ethically ambiguous journey I was on while making the film.

I went on to meet many young men who suffered no complications from their transplant and who used their money wisely to send their kids to school, buy a house and in some cases, buy a micro-business that would provide them with ongoing income. I met others who drank and caroused through their money in mere months and one unfortunate soul who learned that his one remaining kidney was riddled with disease. The fact is, stories with positive outcomes are rarely, if ever, documented, though they represented the majority of cases that I witnessed.

Finally, at the heart of Tales From the Organ Trade is the anatomy of a single black market transplant. I interviewed a Canadian man who travelled to the Medicus Clinic in Kosovo for his transplant. Raul was brave enough to share his story with me and appear on camera. He was a very sympathetic character, who hoped that the money he was paying would help someone out of poverty just as they were helping him to live. It was a surprise to me (and to Raul) that several months later the Medicus clinic would be at the centre of one of the most notorious organ trafficking prosecutions in recent memory.

At that point, I decided that I would try to piece together all the 2015 AWARDS EDITION

players from a single black market organ transplant. Raul was the recipient, but we still had to track down the rest of the people involved in his operation. My first stop was Kosovo, where I filmed Jonathan Ratel, the prosecutor of the case. I was able to get my hands on the indictment, which served as a blueprint for all the transplants that took place at the clinic.

The Turkish surgeon who allegedly performed the transplants, Dr. Yusuf Sonmez, was a fugitive from justice, wanted by Interpol. Dubbed Dr. Vulture by the international media, Sonmez is considered one of the most notorious organ traffickers in the world.

Surprisingly, I was able to contact him through his own website! I sent an email message telling him what I was doing and asking if he would be willing to meet me for coffee – no cameras, no crew. His response: “I googled you – having a cup of coffee doesn’t sound very very bad.” I flew to Turkey, hoping that I didn’t make the trip for a mere cup of coffee. He set a time and place for a meeting. It turned out coffee was accompanied by dinner, which was accompanied by his parents, wife and young child. At the end of the meal he told me he saw no reason to appear in the documentary. The next day he changed his mind.

Why? Because his mother liked me!

I reached out to Dr. Zaki Shapira, an Israeli doctor who was an unindicted co-conspirator in the case. Dr. Shapira granted me an interview. When I questioned him on the morality of the black market organ trade he shrugged, “I’m a doctor. When I know I can save someone’s life, should I tell them I can’t because it’s illegal? Impossible!”

After spending months trying to identify Raul’s “donor”, we finally gained access to the stacks of evidence that were collected for the prosecution. After sifting through thousands of pages we found a faded photocopy of her Moldovan passport. With the help of a local journalist in Moldova, we found out where she worked and finally met her face-to-face. In sharp contrast to all reports on this case, she was healthy, happy and she was paid every penny she was promised.

The Kosovo case was a widely reported story internationally and every article screamed exploitation, organ theft and abuse.

13

I NEED A KIDNEY: Mary Jo’s story put a human face on the difficulties of living on dialysis, and the harsh reality of what it’s like to be on a waiting list that’s brutally slow.

PHOTO CREDIT: Associated Producers

The real story was much more layered.

It’s undeniable there are atrocities in the world of organ trafficking, heinous and unacceptable by any standards. The black market potentially exposes both the organ sellers AND the recipients to abuse and to sub-standard medical practice.

In China, there have been reports from reliable sources saying that organs are being taken from executed prisoners, in particular the Falun Gong.

In India, it is known that debt-laden villagers are being coerced by their lenders to sell their kidneys to pay back their loans.

In these cases, and likely many others, there is no moral ambiguity. We all understand that this is wrong. But the lion’s share of the organ trade takes place in an ethical grey zone.

The black market in organs is flourishing worldwide. Demand for kidneys is growing. As more desperate patients realize that they will never make it to the top of the list, more operations are going to take place in the unregulated world of the black market.

Tales From the Organ Trade doesn’t provide a solution, but with access to all the players, I’m hoping that the film provides some insight into this complicated, tragic human drama.

Telling this story, and the art of documentary filmmaking I’m a documentary filmmaker who does largely investigative stories. On this documentary I was director, producer and

Finalists Kathleen Martens Wasting away APTN Investigates Geoff Leo, Roxanna Woloshyn Mining for a miracle CBC News Saskatchewan Sandie Rinaldo, Litsa Sourtzis, Sarah Stevens Predator’s playground CTV – W5 Brennan Leffler, Jennifer Tryon, Jonathan Wong, Elias Campbell, Krysia Collyer, Laurie Few Out of shadows Global News – 16X9

writer. I had two co-producers.

We approached Canadian filmmaker David Cronenberg because the subject matter seemed right for him -- and his voice. We asked him to watch an early cut and hoped that if he saw it he would feel comfortable being associated with the film. Turns out he did!

Raising the money for documentaries is always an issue. To raise the money to make this film, I pre-sold the idea of the documentary to HBO in the U.S., and Shaw Media in Canada.

As the story got more complicated, and I had to travel more extensively, I approached other broadcasters in Europe to try to raise more funds.

I ended up selling the story to ZDF/ Arte, a German/French broadcaster.

I’ve been making films for around 20 years and start from scratch with each new project, trying to find funders and broadcasters. It’s always a struggle.

Call for Applications

The Atkinson Fellowship in Public Policy provides the opportunity for an experienced Canadian journalist to pursue a one-year, in-depth examination of an emerging or challenging public policy issue.

The Atkinson Fellow is provided with a one-year research stipend of $75,000 and up to $25,000 for expenses beginning September 1, 2016.

The fellowship culminates in a series of published articles in the Toronto Star in the fall of 2017. The deadline for applications is February 10, 2016 no later than 5:00 p.m. (EST).

For more information on this opportunity and our selection process, please visit: www.atkinsonfoundation.ca/grants/atkinson-fellowship-in-public-policy/

Related links https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=xJX1UQ3Z94c Www.talesfromtheorgantrade.com http://www.thisisyearone.com/ric-esther-bienstock-asking/

14 MEDIA

2015 AWARDS EDITION

15

CAJ – Open Broadcast News

SPEAKING OUT: Kalen’s nervousness was justified.

The response to his story was overwhelming. It took on a life of its own.

PHOTO CREDIT: CBC

Foreign Workers McJobs CBC News – The National Kathy Tomlinson, Enza Uda, Robb Douglas

By Enza Uda

T

his story started with Kalen Christ, a 21-year-old fast-food worker. He was working at a McDonald’s restaurant in Victoria, BC, and wrote to CBC’s Go Public with concerns that his franchise’s owners were bringing over temporary foreign workers to three locations.

His bosses had done this before, which resulted in his and his co-workers’ hours being cut. He wondered why there was a need to hire temporary foreign workers in the first place, since he said resumés came in almost daily at their restaurant from potential applicants.

He had learned from Go Public’s ground-breaking coverage of RBC and the TFW controversy that this was against the rules. Foreign workers could only be hired if Canadians were unavailable.

The RBC story led to a flood of emails claiming abuses of the temporary foreign worker program from the fast-food to oiland-gas sectors. We looked into many of them, but most were impossible to prove.

This one was different. Kalen was smart and motivated, willing to help us obtain internal records, although still reluctant to go on camera.

He was conscious about being misconstrued as a racist and a disgruntled employee. He was neither. Far from it.

He liked his Filipino colleagues, but was upset at management. He felt he was neither given the same hours, nor the same opportunities. His bosses told him the

foreigners “work harder” and were “more reliable”.

For several weeks, I worked with Kalen to obtain what we needed to prove his claims. Months of work schedules and payroll documents painted a clear pattern: Over time, the foreign workers were getting full-time hours, while the local workers’ hours were cut back.

It also showed some were being paid more than locals. Kalen was also able to provide dozens of resumes from local applicants.

Getting Kalen on camera We had the proof. Now we needed him to go on the record, on camera. After many, many phone conversations, Kalen was finally persuaded to do the interview.

Reporter Kathy Tomlinson (now with The Globe and Mail) headed to Victoria with long-time CBC cameraman Robb Douglas to shoot the interview with another restaurant worker who had dropped off a resumé at the McDonald’s franchise, but never heard back.

Kalen’s nervousness was justified. The response to his story was overwhelming. It took of life of its own.

The government was swift to crack down on the franchise owners, suspending all their foreign-worker permits, and putting them on a blacklist pending its investigation. It set up a tip line and then-Employment Minister, Jason Kenney, made a

public call for complaints of abuse of the temporary foreign worker program. As for McDonald’s Canada, it initially pushed back when confronted with the claims.

However, once the federal government took action, the fast-food giant was forced to end its relationship with the owners and took over their three locations. It also said it would monitor its company’s use of the program. Kalen got to keep his job, pushed into the public spotlight, and did several interviews with other TV, radio and newspaper outlets.

B.C. Federation of Labour threatened to boycott McDonald’s. The public outcry was huge.

Beyond the one anecdote The story at this point was far from over. We heard from many other local McDonald’s employees, especially from British Columbia and Alberta, who faced the same challenges as Kalen, losing hours to temporary foreign workers. On the flip side, temporary workers from Belize with the fast food chain also went public, claiming they were treated like “slaves”.

The real kicker came when another McDonald’s franchise owner leaked a recorded conference call to Go Public reporter Kathy Tomlinson. In it, McDonald’s Canada’s CEO, John Betts, called the temporary foreign worker controversy “bullshit”, claiming that Jason Kenney “gets it”, suggesting he was on side. He

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had held a national conference call with the company’s franchisees across the country to talk about the bad publicity spurred on by Go Public reports. Turns out Kenney was not on side and immediately announced a moratorium on the food services sector’s access to the foreign worker program. There have been sweeping – and controversial – changes to program since our stories aired. The rules have tightened, making it harder and more expensive for Canadian employers to bring in foreign workers.

Go Public - A dedicated team For several years, a small team of dedicated investigative journalists have worked hard to build the popular, awardwinning CBC segment, Go Public. All our stories were generated by members of the public, people from all walks of life who experienced an injustice, and who wanted to get answers and accountability. It has been successful in fulfilling CBC’s mandate of public-service journalism. Most stories that went to air got positive results for the people who went public, and sometimes they sparked changes in policy, like this one.

The key to its success has been the CBC’s willingness to devote the time and resources to the segment. These stories take time. It takes time to sift through the 2015 AWARDS EDITION

dozens, sometimes hundreds of emails received daily. It takes time and expertise to see the potential in an email from the public. And it takes time and skill to investigate and tell these stories.

In times of declining newsroom budgets, I can only hope media organizations will continue to invest in investigative journalism, giving journalists the time and resources needed to uncover stories

Finalists Alison Crawford Operation Snapshot: behind the scenes of a child porn bust CBC News Gosie Sawicka, Leif Larsen, Pierre Verriere Firearms instructor gives certificates after helping students with exam CBC News Manitoba Kevin Newman, Litsa Sourtzis, Annie Burns-Pieper Suicide watch CTV – W5

with impact, stories that serve the public interest.

Tip Sheet Keep an open mind and listen: Real stories can come from unexpected places.

Kalen was a very young high school dropout, an unlikely source, but he was positioned perfectly to tell this story and get the goods to prove it.

Be prepared, do your research: If you’re going to hold powers accountable, you have to make sure you’re right.

Be persistent: Kalen was a reluctant participant. We spent a lot of time on the phone, getting to know him, and building a relationship of trust. When you know you have the facts right, don’t let PR spin, blanket denials or meaningless platitudes from government or corporations distract you. Keep pushing. They always push back -- the bigger the story, the harder they push.

Enza Uda researched and produced “Go Public” with Kathy Tomlinson from 2008 to 2015, with a two-year hiatus working with CBC Vancouver’s investigative team. She is now a writer and producer with the CBC News in Vancouver.

Investigative reporter Kathy Tomlinson led the Go Public team from 2007 to 2015.

She is now a reporter with The Globe and Mail.

17

CAJ – CWA Canada / CAJ Award For Labour Reporting

Rail Fatigue in Canada – A Silent Peril CBC Investigative Unit Dave Seglins, John Nicol, Heather Evans, Carla Turner, Jeremy MacDonald and Gord Westmacott (The Current, CBC Radio) Story Links http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/freight-train-drivers-reportfalling-asleep-on-the-job-1.2781696 http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/rail-companies-fight-newrules-to-prevent-crew-fatigue-1.2785581

By Dave Seglins

I

magine a freight train, three kilometres long, rolling across Canada at speeds in excess of 80 kilometres an hour, carrying all manner of dangerous goods -- passing communities, rail traffic signals, level crossings -- and the engineer is literally falling asleep at the controls.

That’s the terrifying reality according to several of Canada’s locomotive operators, in candid interviews with CBC News, as well as fatigue surveys by rail worker unions and Transport Canada.

CBC interviewed working engineers who admit to missing stop signals, and narrowly avoiding rail disasters after nodding off at the controls and being in a fog due to long, exhaustive shifts with little rest.

We protected their identities, as these veteran railroaders risked careers and pensions to speak out about an industry that relies on an entrenched 24-7 on-call scheduling system. In one case we unearthed phone recordings of a CP Rail dispatcher ordering an engineer to report for duty to

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/engineer-was-asked-todrive-passenger-train-on-two-hours-sleep-1.2790160

drive a passenger train on two hours sleep.

How we got the story This exposé was the result of several years of interest in rail safety. It is just one of several investigative stories that grew out of a CBC I-Unit in Toronto which in 2012 began documenting problems and corruption within Canada’s rail industry.

We received tips about problems at CN Rail including a bizarre story of the company hauling a train of tanker cars back and forth to the U.S. and never unloading the cargo. Turns out it was a scam by shippers to defraud a US government green energy program.

On July 6, 2013, when a runaway freight train carrying crude oil rolled through the heart of Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, derailing, exploding and killing 47 people, the CBC already had deep sources within the industry.

We mounted stories about the alarming frequency of runaway trains, failures by

major rail companies to properly report accidents and derailments to safety regulators, and corruption allegations within the industry.

This work attracted more than 50 tipsters and sources from inside the industry -- including family members and spouses of railroaders who kept telling us about a culture of ‘iron fisted management,’ constant fear of firings, and chronic fatigue among railroaders.

Railroaders and other insiders of all stripes kept telling us about a lesserknown, pervasive peril within the industry.

We heard legions of complaints, stories of divorce, depression, alcoholism and risks to public safety.

It all stemmed, we were told, from railroaders’ long shifts away from home, men and women forced to respond to a 24-7 on-call scheduling system identified by safety regulators as grossly affecting the health and competence of locomotive crews.

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A CLOSE CALL: A rail engineer who wished to remain anonymous told CBC News that he had once been so exhausted while on shift that he missed a signal at the controls of a three-kilometre-long train.

PHOTO CREDIT

Obstacles CBC focused on this issue of rail fatigue, years of studies done by government, and found a number of veteran working railroaders who – fearing dismissal – agreed to be interviewed, only if we obscured their faces and their voices CBC granted this confidentiality believing these railroaders’ stories represented a widespread complaint among workers.

Without protection of identities, these men would never have spoken up publicly.

They candidly admitted to near misses at work and nightmares while off-duty, bolting awake in their beds, dreaming they were behind the controls of a locomotive and about to crash having missed a stop signal or signs of an on-coming train.

Beyond these interviews, our findings were bolstered by the discovery that Transport Canada had designed a survey of rail workers that ultimately was conducted by their unions. It confirmed high levels of chronic fatigue.

Our stories forced the issue onto the national transportation agenda, including at a federal railway working group on fatigue management.

What’s more, the rail fatigue stories 2015 AWARDS EDITION

Finalists Ira Basen Class Struggle CBC Radio One – Sunday Edition CBC News: World Report / CBC Radio – The Current Sunny Freeman The 4,000 kilometre commute The Huffington Post Robert Bostelaar The secret squeeze Ottawa Citizen Gordon Hoekstra Call renewed for justice Vancouver Sun

prompted another flood of tips that has led to yet more stories – including an exposé of a feud between Canada’s Transport Minister and the head of CP Rail over an investigation of a CP train parked in the B.C. mountains which regulators allege was left without proper brakes.

Lessons learned CBC’s “Rail Fatigue” series is a testament to how the investment of time and journalistic resources (so rare these days) can reap huge longer-term rewards. Tips, expertise and the trust of sources enabled us to become a leading Canadian voice on rail safety.

Investigative journalism takes money and time. But it’s that investment which is needed to unearth these kinds of original, stories – to develop the smarts, the depth, and the trust and reputation on an issue of such vital public importance.

And there’s more to come, so stay tuned….

Dave Seglins is an investigative journalist with CBC News based in Toronto. He and his team can be reached at (416) 2055823, or by emailing dave.seglins@cbc. ca or tips@cbc.ca 19

FIGHTING FOR THE NEXT GENERATION: Feng Cheng and his son Sean at their apartment in Beijing.

PHOTO CREDIT Britney Dennison

CAJ – Online Media “China’s Generation Green” International Reporting Program, University of British Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism, Shantou University’s Cheung Kong School of Journalism and Communication and the Toronto Star.

By Britney Dennison

C

hina has an environmental movement?” This was the typical question we heard from many of our family and friends when we described our project, “China’s Generation Green.”

Everyone knows about pollution in China – the air is thick with smog, the water is polluted, the soil is contaminated, the waste is increasing and the biodiversity of the country is rapidly disappearing.

But what we wanted to highlight with our project is what people are doing about the environmental crises.

A growing movement Chinese economic growth over the last few decades is unlike anything the world has ever seen. The so-called “Chinese miracle” is manifested in the growing domestic demand for consumer goods like televisions, smartphones, and cars. There are now more than 240 million cars on China’s roads, with more new vehicles added in 2012 than there were on the road, total, at the turn of the century.

The trade-off for 30 years of prosperity has been a legacy of unspeakable envi-

ronmental damage. This is reflected every day in newspapers and magazines around the world, and the country’s reputation is inextricable from its toxic footprint. China has become infamous for its ‘apocalyptic’ air.

The country has become a symbol of the darkest side of economic development and globalization. And 300 million more people are expected to enter the country’s middle class by 2020, multiplying the damage.

But what few people know is that there is a burgeoning movement among young Chinese trying to do something about this environmental crisis. This series is about the generation that has inherited a toxic legacy, and a few members of that generation who are openly and actively trying to change the trajectory of the country to avoid disaster.

32-year-old researcher Chen Liwen won a lawsuit against the Guangzhou Environmental Bureau for failing to release their data on incinerators. Our readers’ were shocked. They were shocked that you can

sue the Chinese government – and win.

In the words of wildlife photographer Yuanqi Wu, “We are the generation at the point when China has become more open.

We travel internationally, and we see the outside world through the Internet. We’ve been influenced by other countries’ environmentally friendly ideas. And we want to tell the world what we want, what we think and what the government has been doing wrong.”

A team effort This project was produced by the International Reporting Program (IRP), which is a yearlong course out of the University of British Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism.

The IRP is designed to train the next generation of global journalists. I was a fellow in the program. We spent the year working collaboratively to produce “China’s Generation Green.” Our team included 10 students and a group of professors who have expertise across various media and subject areas. Our in-class time was spent reviewing works of interna-

20 MEDIA

tional journalism, researching China’s environmental crisis, deliberating on ethics, discussing form and medium and developing our stories.

With the International Reporting Program the process is as important as the product. We learn how to find the story and sources, how to organize travel and visas, create reporting schedules and ultimately how to gather all the material we need in the short length of time we have in the field.

For many students in the class, this is the first time they’ve had the opportunity to report internationally. We divided into five groups to examine air, food, waste, water, wildlife, and conspicuous consumption.

My team included my classmate Emma Bower (Editor’s note: now Emma Smith) and our professor Dan McKinney. We were reporting on families whose children were sick from Beijing’s air pollution.

Parents were desperate to protect their kids from the smog and were doing everything they could to mitigate the health risks involved with living in one of the world’s most polluted cities.

The students reporting on waste remained with us in Beijing, while others fanned out across the country, reporting in Yunnan province in the south, Shanghai and Chengdu in the west.

Accompanying each team was a Chinese student from Shantou University’s Cheung Kong School of Journalism and Communication. The International Reporting Program partnered with Shantou University students at the beginning of the 2015 AWARDS EDITION

year. Teams checked in with their partner each week to discuss stories, sources and strategies.

The project challenged the traditional fixer role through its collaborative ap-

Finalists Ashley Terry, Heather Loney, Kevin Buffitt, James Armstrong, Andrew Russell, Carmen Chai, Laura Stone, Amy Minsky, Irene Ogrodnik Invisible wounds GlobalNews.ca Joshua Hergesheimer This man says Canadians need to know what’s in their government pension plan and what demanding justice cost him Freelancer / The Vancouver Observer

proach and the students from Shantou University used the materials gathered to create their own works of journalism.

The resulting project was a parallax website for the International Reporting Program and an accompanying web and print project for the Toronto Star. Both sites use video, interactive graphics, photos, audio and text. There was significant traffic and engagement, with the majority of committed visitors in the first week

staying 10-30 minutes. The story also gained wide attention on social media, both on Twitter and on China’s Weibo network.

Next Steps In journalism you rarely have the opportunity to spend nine months on one story. At the beginning of the project nine months seemed like a long time, but we quickly realized that no length of time is ever enough. There were countless stories of young Chinese activists that we could have added to the project – stories about protesters, the development of innovative technologies and social media revolutions.

That is why the International Reporting Program, which is currently being transformed into a Global Reporting Centre, is planning to continue reporting on the topic. Our goal is to build on the work we have already done, and expand the project to reach an audience in China.

The full roster of recipients: Umbreen Butt, Britney Dennison, Allison Griner, Emma Smith, Aurora Tejeida, Jimmy Thomson, Carlos Tello, Mike Wallberg, Leif Zapf-Gilje, Peter Klein, David Rummel, Kathryn Gretsinger, Daniel McKinney, Kim Frank, Chantelle Bellrichard, Travis North, Peter Herford, Katelyn Verstraten, Yujuan Xie, Zhenzhen Zhang, Haiyan Wu, Xiaoqing Yang, Xiaohong Lin, Yonglin Yao, Yacong Luo Britney Dennison is the research advisor for The Global Reporting Centre and a former fellow of the International Reporting Program. Reach her at britneydennison@gmail.com and on Twitter at @ BritneyDennison 21

RUSHING TO THE ALTAR: With seconds to spare, and a little help from her bridesmaids, Nikki Coles, from the community of Fogo on Fogo Island, cuts through a field to the back door of St. Andrew’s Anglican Church to wed Jason Ford of Deep Bay, another hamlet on the island.

CAJ – Photojournalism Portfolio entry

How I got it: I was lucky to spend a few days documenting life on Newfoundland’s Fogo Island which was a-buzz with news of a wedding. I set off driving around the village from church to church trying to find the details, when I noticed women leaving a hair salon with a veil. Turns out she was the bride-to-be. We chatted. She was thrilled. And so like a paparazzi, I staked out the back door of the church.

The Globe and Mail John Lehmann

R

aw talent will only get you so far as a photojournalist and I think if you look at the work of successful visual storytellers you’ll see that they have a clear and intimate understanding of the story.

For me one of the fundamental basics of being a successful photojournalist is making sure that I’m part of the process

from the beginning, and then contributing my own ideas. Many of the images in my winning portfolio are strong on content and composition. They are also creative.

Photojournalism is about storytelling and meaningful content, not a fleeting moment posted to Instagram.

British Columbia is North America’s

visual candy story. It never fails to amaze me when looking back over my years’ work, the vast richness of the visual diversity found in British Columbian for a photojournalist. 2014 had a number of highlights, but the return of the Adams River Salmon run was the most technically challenging and my personal favourite.

LIMBERING UP: Jennifer Bennet, 18, who will perform as a snowflake flower in the Goh Ballet’s Nutcracker stretches before rehearsals at The Centre in Vancouver, December 7, 2014.

How I got it: Covering a rehearsal over an actual performance can often leaded to better images because of greater access and a more relaxed atmosphere. I noticed the dancers would pause for a once-over in the mirror on their way on to the stage. I positioned myself in a spot that would frame the dancer with the leading lines of the stairs and waited.

John Lehmann is one of the top photojournalists in North America. He was named Canadian photojournalist of the year in 2012 and 2013 by the News Photographers of Canada.

VIEW FROM A FISHBOWL: A female and male (front) salmon in the spawning grounds along the banks of the Adams River in the Roderick Haig-Brown Park October 13, 2014. The Adams River salmon run occurs every year, but every fourth year is the dominant year when the largest return occurs. The last dominant year was 2010, which was the largest since 1913.

Finalists

How I got it: The dramatic photograph of salmon making their way up the Adams River to spawn was one of the most the challenging and technically difficult to take, but it produced one of the best results. To achieve a unique view of the salmon, I placed my $10,000 camera in a fish tank bought off the shelf at pet shop (yes, I really used a fish tank), mounted a flash to the side, weighed everything down with small bags of kitty litter and placed the whole contraption precariously on a couple of rocks in the fast-moving river. With a radio trigger to allow me to stay a good distance away, and a lot of patience, the fish gradually became comfortable with the foreign object in their path.

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2015 SPRING EDITION

Climate-change protester and former Prime Minister Stephen Harper

Jason McGown yawns sitting between his uncle and father.

Jonathan Hayward Portfolio entry The Canadian Press

Larry Wong Portfolio entry Edmonton Journal

Joy at Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside Darryl Dyck Portfolio entry Freelancer / The Canadian Press 23

CAJ – JHR/ CAJ Award for Human Rights Reporting Outside the circle APTN National News Trina Roache

I

n recent years, much of the media coverage on Jordan’s Principle has centred on the court case of Jeremy Meawasige and his mother Maurina Beadle.

At newsworthy moments, Beadle has let cameras into her living room in the Pictou Landing First Nation to talk about her battle with the Canadian Government over the care of her son.

Jeremy is disabled, living with autism and cerebral palsy. Beadle had always cared for him at home on-reserve in Nova Scotia. After a stroke in 2010, she needed help. Unwilling to put her son into a provincial institution off-reserve, the band arranged for home care. When Ottawa wouldn’t cough up the money to cover the extra cost, the band took the federal government to court claiming this was a case of Jordan’s Principle.

The Pictou Landing First Nation won.

The federal government appealed the decision. A producer with APTN filed an access-to-information request to find out why. One line repeated in the briefing notes caught our eye; a concern that it “could create a precedent.”

That led to the simple question – how many cases of Jordan’s Principle are there? As I found out after months of research, there’s no easy answer.

The essence of Jordan’s Principle is equal healthcare for indigenous kids living on-reserve. How services get paid for onreserve works differently. Dental care, or a hearing aid, or a wheelchair, might fall under Aboriginal Affairs, Health Canada, or the province. But it’s not always clear, and children’s’ needs can fall through the cracks. The goal of Jordan’s Principle is to provide the care first and argue over who pays later.

It was inspired by the death of a fiveyear-old Cree boy in Manitoba in 2005.

Jordan River Anderson had a rare muscular disorder. He died in hospital while the provincial and federal governments fought over who should flip the bill for his home care.

Two years later, Jordan’s Principle received unanimous support from Canada’s MPs in the House of Commons. But fastforward to today. It’s a principle a federal government has yet to put into practice.

At the time APTN aired its three-part series, Outside the Circle, Ottawa insisted no Jordan’s Principle cases even existed.

Ask an organization like the First Nations Child & Family Caring Society and the answer is in the hundreds.

That discrepancy is where the story lies.

Indigenous understanding of equal healthcare doesn’t fit the government’s criteria for the Jordan’s Principle. It’s a policy mired in bureaucracy with no money atFinalists Patrick Cain, Leslie Young, Anna Mehler Paperny Canada’s Unwanted GlobalNews.ca Michelle Shephard In Central African Republic: A Lesson In Hate Toronto Star Tanya Talaga An Afghan boy’s lonely trek to freedom Toronto Star Carol Sanders Nowhere to go Winnipeg Free Press

tached.

The principle is inconsistent across the country. And First Nations have had little say in how the policy is shaped. Combing through federal documents is a lesson in semantics. Ottawa only promises care equal to the area around the First Nation. That doesn’t bode well for the many remote indigenous communities.

The biggest challenge in the story was finding information.

On its own website, Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada (AANDC) has reports and audits over the years pointing out gaps in service, and a lack of funding for healthcare on reserves.

But Jordan’s Principle is specific to situations where there’s a dispute over who should pay. Ottawa narrows that dispute to the provincial and federal governments But frequently, people living on-reserve are bounced between two federal departments – Health Canada and AANDC. To qualify under AANDC guidelines, the child must have multiple disabilities, requiring multiple service providers. What if a child has only one special need?

What do families do when they can’t get a new wheelchair, or home care, or drugs, or a hearing aid device not covered by the non-Insured Health Benefits for First Nations and Inuit?

Emails to Health Canada and AANDC asking for information and statistics offered nothing that wasn’t already on the website. They granted no interviews.

But when child welfare advocate Cindy Blackstock and the Assembly of First Nations brought a human right complaint against Ottawa, APTN was the broadcaster.

Blackstock has long argued that how the federal government provides child welfare, including Jordan’s Principle,

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FIGHTING FOR JEREMY: Maurina Beadle and her son Jeremy Meawasige live on the Pictou Landing First Nation, N.S. When Maurina had a stroke in 2010, she needed extra help taking care of Jeremy at home. Both the provincial government and Ottawa argued against footing the bill.

The Pictou landing Band took the Canadian government to court over Jordan’s Principle, and won in 2013.

CREDIT: APTN

discriminates against indigenous people on-reserve.

Weeks of hearings from the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal were live-streamed and archived. It was a rare window into the bureaucratic logic that steers the federal department responsible for handling Aboriginal Affairs.

What it revealed was a lack of political will to follow through on a promise of equal healthcare for First Nations, Metis and Inuit.

AANDC officials kept track of the disparities in healthcare, but as a former AANDC bureaucrat testified, “We are not mandated to create a new program that will fill those gaps.”

Critics call that racism. A denial of basic human rights for indigenous people living on reserve in Canada.

Several weeks after APTN’s series aired in 2014, Ottawa dropped its appeal of the Jordan’s Principle case. Maurina Beadle and her son Jeremy’s legal victory stands.

But in the year since, nothing has 2015 AWARDS EDITION

changed.

Ottawa has made no move to fully implement Jordan’s Principle.

Indigenous child welfare advocates are biding their time. The decision from the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal is imminent. Jordan’s Principle is not an issue mainstream society is fully aware of. But it’s a reality for First Nations families living in often, small, remote communities, struggling to care for a child with special needs. And that’s why it’s a crucial story for the media to tell.

Tips for covering Indigenous stories: 1. Despite commonalities, don’t apply a pan-Aboriginal understanding to a particular First Nation. Indigenous communities are varied, both in culture and history.

2. Stay and chat, share some food.

Media often sweep in and out in a mad dash to meet crazy deadlines. But to gain trust, true understanding and gain contacts who will help you on your next story… take the time. It’s worth it.

3. File access-to-information requests. Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada is hardly forthcoming with information.

4. Have conversations that don’t lead to a story. Aboriginal organizations and band councils can also resemble Fort Knox when it comes to information.

Develop a few key off-the-record contacts who you can call. They’ll point you in the right direction.

5. One story won’t capture the complex realities of life on-reserve. One story might paint a chief and council or government as the bad guy. One story might seem like a fluff piece. So tell as many stories as you can on the First Nations in your region.

6. Have a sense of humour.

Trina Roache is the Halifax Correspondent, APTN National News. She has been with the network for eight years. The CAJ prize is her first award. You can reach her at(902)292-1911, troache@aptn.ca or follow her on Twitter @TrinaRoache 25

NNA – Journalist of the Year, Editorial Cartooning Coming to the aid of a fatally wounded corporal Nathan Cirillo Halifax Chronicle Herald Bruce MacKinnon Apistiant. Torempor aut lab ipsum quis aliandae. Ga. Nam quam dolo Otatquo doles dolorecea pelecta quassundi occus autem a doloreent facit omnis eos inullac epeles turempo reperchicae. Et ut parum henis aut quo offic tem volentibus, voloria diaes ullatur? quodignatis eum simillique eum quiasi dolorepuda volland itaquos Ex es iditiberum ad molupti cum se voluptae cullaci pidesse ndeles rem re, consequi quiae placcus eum ut alita nonsequi dundi nus delessi aliquis erfereius ariatusciet dolupid facest autem faceprovit inctur, offic- tes simpellabor andigen delectus ute debis quis et, quis repudit re ta que et laccae moluptatem dolore- asperis denduciam simos modigent, repelibus. rum hiliqui denis es estem iduciur? quias ent officia dit pore sim seditib Ernati doloribusdam voluptature volorem.fatally Imusdaeperum quam voloreWar re voluptate sam guarding voluptatenda quatur adiossi to blacn Oct. 22, 2014, I was in myTet office shot at the foot ofusaesedis the National on duty, the war monument. il exeri cus alis que dolorrume ulparib earuptat officto eni ium illes cus andunt. working on a cartoon for the next Memorial, and; In the back of my mind, the challenge of quid esequis sit am niate perum et sed mo minis reni quam quaspisMusa dolupta cus, officiet faceariam day’s paper when news broke of a shoot2) Inside the Parliament buildings, the drawing a crowd of soldiers coming to life molorere diciandae consequam sit re nonsequ untur, sunt quideri buscimpe nisciam eius atur apist que ing on Parliament Hill in Ottawa. hit pa quiatatem Sergeant-at-arms had shot and killed an on top of the war monument, with omnimos so little aut acestium ut nesequaepro ne am haruptatia que solendae nec- cias perspis I had been sketching out an idea on attacker. time left to draw beforeeiusdant deadline, was a andae nihicto elector ehentia incil et ilit asitio mosam. tiatur maximintibus que sit vero another issue and, not being particularly with as two minum reptatisI came aut quiup aceatur et vereproresto bea cus, solorpore eic partial to cartoons on tragedy, murder and ideas: one essentially tem. Ut optapainting arum corro es pores ut other such dark subjects, my first impulse Kevin Vick'09 YA ISM , KEN AL que simoluptur?

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ONE samus aut dolorepta prerrovidis -A This really notched up the tension.

In I couldn’t be cerUKI ND TW senda ipid que eri odi nim volorNGS O-Y the absence of known facts, the potential tain,doluptur? when the smoke EAR .CA ibus doluptatus Solore, /JO URN GRADU is huge for knee-jerk responses and quat just venihitati haddebis cleared, that the sapicimetur ALIS A M/G TE PRO getting it wrong, at a time when more auteyes perrunt,Sergeant-at-arms aspedis re volliati odis RAD G UAT RAMS alitiumbe a the will be on the newspaper than ever. explibus, coreicaerum would actually E-A DVA voluptae. alitat By the time I had started to scratch out Otatur hero restium, I was suggesting NCE D laboreptius ipsae aperuptat aut was ideas, there seemed to be only two key he was.

One thing odicipsania certain: doluptatur, consectem confirmed facts: Nathan Cirillo

By Bruce MacKinnon

O

E TH URE T FU OF URJO LISM NAAT .

IS G’S KIN

D N I F T OUHY. W

1) An unarmed honour guard had been

had been killed while

2015 Fall Edition 2 26 MEDIA

COMPASSIONATE COMRADES COME TO LIFE: Cpl. Nathan Cirillo, a reservist who was guarding the National War Memorial outside the Parliament buildings in Ottawa, was shot and killed in a terror attack that ended in a shoot-out on Parliament Hill.

Bruce MacKinnon -- The Chronicle Herald, Halifax, N.S.

little daunting.

But the magnitude of the event, combined with the powerful symbolism of the war monument, made it too compelling to avoid.

The idea of having one of the statues coming to the rescue seemed inescapable to me. Cirillo was killed at the base of the National War Memorial with the figures of these historic Canadian soldiers standing over him.

Cartoonists are always seeking out symbolism and metaphor. What do soldiers do when one of their own is injured? They’re trained to come to their aid. I wanted to 2015 AWARDS EDITION

animate the soldiers to do what they would do naturally for one of their own, and also, to suggest they were taking Cirillo into the fold.

But more than anything, it was a conscious effort to reflect a compassionate response to the shooting rather than a violent or hateful one.

To this day I’m still not sure I fully understand the overwhelming reaction to this cartoon, though I am grateful that I was able to at least get it right in a stressful situation.

I am even more grateful the cartoon was able to provide some level

of comfort and consolation to so many people, and more importantly, provide financial support for the families of the victims through residual sales of prints.

That was a unique and tangible benefit that made me feel good about the continued relevance of editorial cartooning in journalism.

Bruce MacKinnon has been the Halifax Chronicle Herald’s staff editorial cartoonist for 29 years. It was his first overall win, and fourth NNA win for Editorial Cartooning; he has had eight nominations in the category.

27

NNA – Multimedia Feature and CAJ / Marketwired Data Jour-

A STUDY IN CONCENTRATION: A student at Adelaide Hoodless Public School gets down to business.

PHOTO CREDITS: John Rennison/The Hamilton Spectator

nalism Award The Hamilton Spectator uncovered the connections between standardized test scores and social and economic factors Teri Pecoskie

I

reported on standardized test scores regularly when I was working the Hamilton Spectator’s education beat. And each time, regardless of whether the pass rates went up or down, school board officials reacted in much the same way: The scores don’t tell the whole story, they’d say. In fact, the numbers alone can’t tell you much about a school or school board at all.

I guess that’s how Keeping Score started. I was tired of being told what the data couldn’t tell me, and eager to find out what it could.

Rather than examining one or even a couple years’ worth of data, I decided to look at several in order to uncover local trends and determine whether the Ontario’s $31-million annual investment in the assessments is worth it.

It is, the series shows. Particularly because of the tests’ power to help educators identify and mitigate damaging inequities in Ontario schools. But it took me a while to get there.

The project hinged on obtaining at least six years of elementary test results from the Education Quality and Accountability Office, an arm’s-length agency established by the province to monitor student achievement.

That should have been the easy part, given the school- and board-level data is published online at the end of every round of testing. But it wasn’t. It took about three months to get the numbers in a format that would allow me to analyze them.

My initial plan was to scrape the results from the EQAO website, but the way in

which they are embedded in PDF files made that virtually impossible. So I ended up filing a formal request with the office instead. Then, I waited.

While I didn’t have to submit a freedom-of-information request — something other journalists were forced to resort to when trying to get these numbers — I did have to prod. A lot. That was probably the biggest roadblock I ran up against.

When I finally got my hands on the results, I mashed them up with socioeconomic information obtained from the province’s education ministry and mapped them. The school-level data was calculated using information from Statistics Canada’s 2006 census, the Ontario School Information System, which tracks student population characteristics, and postal codes collected by individual schools.

The results were shocking.

Across Hamilton, there were massive differences when it came to achievement, and it was happening despite significant investments aimed at leveling the playing field for all kids.

Why did those differences continue to exist, and what could be done to erase them? That’s what I set out to answer in the project, a five-part multimedia series that revealed clear connections between EQAO scores and a range of social and economic factors, including health and wealth, at more than 140 local elementary schools.

It also found: Day 2: Why The Difference? Huge disparities in test results at Catholic and public schools across the city and the

province; Day 3: The Gender Imbalance: A persistent gap in achievement between boys and girls, regardless of income and other factors; Day 4: Unlocking Potentials: Several schools that defy expectations, even when their unique demographics are accounted for.

Published in April 2014, Keeping Score, in the day-five story The Road Ahead, also proposed additional steps that could be taken by elected officials, educators and agencies to help both raise the bar and close the gap for all kids. They listened.

The project, along with my daily reporting on the vast gulf between the city’s have- and have-not schools, was a key factor in the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board’s commitment to partner with the city and local agencies on its systemic overhaul. My recommendations in Part 5 were also consistent with changes recently announced by the EQAO aimed at tailoring the test to specific learning needs and making the results more accessible to educators.

Some of Keeping Score’s findings, such as the fact that students in more disadvantaged schools fare poorly on the test compared to their wealthier peers, weren’t revolutionary. What was, however, were the anomalies it uncovered — trends at schools like Adelaide Hoodless, which improved its average pass rate by more than 60 per cent over six years in spite of the fact that nearly half of its students, around three times the provincial average, come from low-income families.

28 MEDIA

That was the real beauty of this project.

It found remarkable patterns in unremarkable scores, turning the traditional perception of what it means to be a good school (i.e., the one with the top pass rates) on its head.

A Connection to the Born and Code Red Stories Keeping Score builds on much of the landmark work The Spectator has done to map health and education outcomes.

In particular, there are connections to the Don McGillivray Award-winning BORN series I produced with Steve Buist, which mapped maternal health outcomes in Hamilton and across the province, and my Erasing Inequality project, which looked at differences in outcomes at local high schools and how they can be mitigated.

There are obvious connections to The Spectator’s original Code Red series, too, (even more so to Buist’s follow-up profile about Parkview Secondary School principal Paul Beattie) as well as my Code Red: Neighbourhoods project, which looked at how at-risk neighbourhoods have challenges highlighted in the initial series.

Tip Sheet It wasn’t just the numbers that made Keeping Score powerful. It was the people — students, parents, educators and others — who were willing to share their experiences and expertise. For anyone interested in undertaking a similar project, I think my single biggest piece of advice would be to avoid losing sight of those voices when you’re swimming in data. They bring the numbers to life.

In fact, that pretty much sums up my 2015 AWARDS EDITION

NNA FINALISTS Gabrielle Duchaine and Caroline Touzin, Montreal La Presse, for a three-part interactive look at crime in all its facets in Quebec and Montreal http://www.nna-ccj.ca/finalists/ Toronto Star team, for coverage commemorating the 100th anniversary of the start of the First World War, including a walk of the Western Front http://www.thestar.com/news/world/ww1. html CAJ FINALISTS Steven Rennie Meet the fire hydrant that makes Toronto the most money from parking tickets The Canadian Press Patrick Cain Here’s the sex offender map Ontario didn’t want you to see GlobalNews.ca Robert Cribb, Matthew Cole Tainted water Toronto Star Christine Bennett, Heather Brimicombe, Emma Davie, Catharina de Waal, Ian Froese, Matt Gray, Nicolas Haddad, Braeden Jones, Dave Lostracco, Kendra Lovegrove, Shannon MacDonald, Megan Marrelli, Erin McCabe, Helen Pike, Kelsey Power, Kristie Smith, JesseWard Burned University of King’s College / The Chronicle Herald, Halifax, N.S.

approach to data-crunching. While it’s important — even integral — to what I do on a day-to-day basis (I use it for everything from generating story ideas to elevating my daily files), I nonetheless see it as a tool; a means of telling a story about a person, place or event, rather than an end.

I didn’t love education reporting. In fact, a few months after Keeping Score was published, I jumped at a chance to shift to the sports department where I’m now writing about hockey (a data geek’s dream!).

It’s important, though — and not just because education is a multi-billion-dollar public service. It’s important because how it’s administered, and by whom, can profound affect a student’s future.

In my three years on the beat, I spent a lot of time at school board meetings, poring over minutes and agendas — probably more than most of the education reporters who came before me at The Spectator. It was boring, but it paid off. I ended up with a deep understanding of the inner workings of Ontario’s school systems at the local and provincial level. I think educators and administrators respected that expertise. It also helped me gain their trust, which was invaluable on this beat.

So that’s my other piece of advice for education reporters — know your stuff, because that knowledge will help you build relationships in what is sometimes an insular field.

I’m happy to chat anytime about education, sports, data and other stuff. You can find me at tpecoskie@thespec.com or on Twitter at @TeriattheSpec.

29

NNA – Sports “Two Teams, Two Dreams” Toronto Star BATTLING FOR THE PUCK: Matt Boyd of the Quad City Mallards give the Beast’s Jamie “Jim” VanderVeeken a close shave in the third period of the final of two road games.

PHOTO CREDIT: Jim Rankin/Toronto Star

By Jim Coyle (Left to right) Jim Coyle, Paul Hunter, Jim Rankin, Steve Russell

L

ike most guys who grew up in Canada, Paul Hunter and Jim Rankin were of the view that nothing beats a road trip.

Then the Toronto Star journalists met the Brampton Beast.

Hunter and Rankin were part of a Star team that won the 2014 National Newspaper Award for Sportswriting. They chronicled the life and times of the semipro Beast, a team in the Central Hockey League two levels below the NHL and a world away from its glamour.

Their colleagues Jim Coyle and Steve Russell, meanwhile, reported on the return to North Bay of an Ontario Hockey League franchise, and what that meant economically and socially to a small city of 55,000 that had lost its team a dozen years earlier.

Together, in the Star series “Two Teams, Two Dreams,” the reporters and photojournalists tried to capture what hockey means in Canada, far from the bright lights and big cities of the NHL. If, as the saying goes, Canada is hockey, they reckoned that it was so in its truest sense where the game is loved most and played hardest by those on the way up, or on the way down.

For Hunter and Rankin, in particular, the assignment was a bone-rattling eyeopener.

They travelled with the Beast, a team of dreamers in a league where the players are older, the pay is poor and the miles are long, to Moline, Ill., in the American MidWest.

“It was a hell of a road trip, involving

two overnight blizzards,” photojournalist Rankin recalled.

“We were on a sleeper bus, the kind reserved for rock stars, but I don’t know how anyone could ever sleep through the white-knuckle conditions we experienced.

“You’re confined to a narrow bunk, and they are stacked three high. You had a tiny window if you were lucky. I chose to lie with my feet facing the front of the bus, thinking that in the event of a sudden stop, I’d fly onto the Interstate feet first.

“On the first sleepless night, I remember hearing the coach whisper to the bus driver, “Chris, what’s wrong?”

“We’d come to a stop in the middle of nowhere, and the driver simply replied, “I can’t see.”

It got their attention.

As 26-year-old winger Scott Howes, an experienced road tripper, told the Star: “I dread the bus. But it’s one of those things.

If you want to play, you have to do it.”

In many ways, the two Star teams were engaged in the most old-fashioned of journalism: getting to know the cast of characters, seeking to understand and describe their dreams and motivations, trying to convey mood, scene, meaning, mining the ordinary subject matter of hockey, and then turning it into a story of love, commitment, pride and aspiration.

To the writers, Hunter and Coyle, that meant paying attention, filling notebooks with small observed detail, with a player’s succinct but telling quip, seeking the pivotal vignette that speaks volumes.

The award-winning series was born in one of the famous Star features meetings

run by former editor Alison Uncles, now with Maclean’s magazine.

Uncles has a reputation as a one-woman idea machine, an editor who when she’s not proposing stories of her own can take a reporter’s vague notion and see in an instant what the finished product might look like fully imagined in the newspaper, or on-line.

At one meeting, Coyle -- who had worked decades earlier at CP with North Bay Battalion owner Scott Abbott, before the former sports reporter made a fortune inventing Trivial Pursuit -- suggested the return of OHL hockey to North Bay with the transfer of the team from Brampton might make a good story.

Hunter, a hockey Dad and former Star sports reporter, chimed in that the void left in Brampton, when the Battalion left for North Bay, had been filled by the semipro Beast, and a look at that squad might provide a nice bookend to Coyle’s idea.

Uncles reacted as she always did when an idea struck her fancy.

“Oh my gosh, we have to do it!” she enthused.

She immediately hit on the “Two Teams, Two Dreams” packaging.

She wanted Coyle to go beyond hockey and talk to local business owners, political and community leaders, the fan on the street about the impact of a Junior A team on the economy, young people community morale.

From Hunter and Rankin, she hoped for a collective plumbing of the psyche of men who had a quixotic Canadian dream of maybe making it, against all odds, to

30 MEDIA

the NHL. Journalists often say there are some assignments that are so much fun they almost feel guilty taking a paycheque.

(Almost.) And this was one of them.

For Hunter and Rankin, on the Beast bus, their subject was contained, close at hand, conditions intimate.

For Coyle and Russell in North Bay, it meant covering a story that had involved and excited an entire city.

It meant getting to know the town, its business people, its hockey eccentrics. It meant learning the local power-brokers – the Liberals, the Conservatives who had put aside political differences to collaborate on winning the franchise, in renovating the local rink, and in putting a first-rate product on the ice.

The Star staffers found a hockey-happy town that had its heart warmed by a bunch of teenage players through one of the coldest winters in recent times.

Together, Alison Uncles and her team produced a deeply reported package that offered a close-up look at hockey as it is lived by players and experienced by communities all across Canada.

Whatever the price of playing – or supporting – the game they love, it seems Canadians are usually willing to pay it.

Besides, as the veterans assured Rankin and Hunter, their slippery trip aboard the Beast bus, through the snowy night of the U.S. hinterland was nothing too tough.

“When you’ve been on the road as long as we have, and seen some of the horror stories we’ve gone through,” said assistant coach Brent Hughes, “This is a breeze.”

Tip sheet 1) Our minor sports are woefully undercovered. The same sort of Shakespearean elements – the thrill of victory, agony 2015 AWARDS EDITION

LET’S PLAY: Brendan O’Neill starts for the Battalion.

PHOTO CREDIT: Steve Russell/Toronto Star

Finalists Gabriel Béland, Montreal La Presse, for stories on the consequences of a concussion on a minor league hockey player, a triple-A midget team opening its locker room to seven First Nation players, and how a soldier wounded in Afghanistan kept a hold on life through hockey http://www.lapresse.ca/sports/ hockey/201409/20/01-4802038-a-13-ansbrise-par-le-hockey.php Joe O’Connor, National Post, for his coverage of an African-American innercity high school football team and its white coach, a story about race relations in America that needed to be heard above the roar of Ferguson http://www.kaltura.com/index.php/extwidget/preview/partner_id/1698541/ uiconf_id/8704822/entry_id/0_p8hw4rz5/ embed/legacy?

of defeat, cruel twists of fate, untimely goalposts etc. – occur at all levels and are there for the telling. The human emotion and reaction are the same, even if the stakes aren’t as rich or the arenas as big.

A couple of journalism truisms are that, (a) the best stories come from the losing dressing room, not the winning, and (b) the key to a story or photo is often the thing or person on the periphery, on the edge of the spotlight, just off-centre. These axioms were at play in this series.

We were conscious that the very thing that might give it some appeal to the NNA judges was that it was a bit off the beaten path, that it was small-time and minor league.

We figured obscurity played to our

advantage. And we knew that, obscurity notwithstanding, all the elements to make an evocative story were there.

2) The writing tips I give students have remained the same for years.

There are no shortcuts. You have to read -- a lot. And you have to write -- a lot Most people think that because they can speak English, they should be able to write it.

To me, that’s like saying because I can hum Bruce Springsteen, I should be able to pick up a guitar and play his songs. But it doesn’t work that way.

It takes a lot of practice to master an instrument sufficiently to get the music in your heart and soul for others to understand and enjoy. It’s the same with writing.

It takes practice to be able to identify your feelings, gather your ideas and express them with force and clarity.

All of the above explains why so many students are dissatisfied and give up after a first or second draft because it doesn’t sound right.

I tell them that even after 35 years, I never send a first draft to the Star. I rewrite top to bottom, 10, 20, 30 times.

‘Coz as Hemingway said, the hard part of this biz is getting the words right.

Jim Coyle joined the Toronto Star in 1997. Before that, he was a provincial affairs columnist for the Ottawa Citizen for seven years, and enjoyed a 12-year stint at The Canadian Press where he chiefly worked at Queen’s Park and on Parliament Hill. Coyle has written The Quiet Evolution: How Dalton McGuinty Changed Ontario – and Why He Resigned.

The exclusive Star Dispatches eRead is available in the Star Store (starstore.ca).

You can reach Jim at 416-869-4967.

31

NNA – Investigations and CAJ Open Media category

NNA finalists FINALISTS: Kevin Donovan, Jesse Brown and Jacques Gallant, Toronto Star, for their investigation of allegations of sexual assault by CBC Host Jian Ghomeshi

NNA – Investigations and CAJ Open Media category Investigative category: Remorseless

Katia Gagnon, Montreal La Presse, for her investigation into the permissiveness on the part of general practitioners and pharmacists in dispensing morphine

The Hamilton Spectator Jon Wells

I

sat at the living room table across from Ed Huard, a heavily tattooed guy with wary eyes who had once huddled in the trunk of a car clutching a sawed-off shot gun, waiting to kill another man.

In tracking down Huard, I thought I had landed a key interview for my investigative story about Jeremy Hall, a former colleague of Huard’s. Hall was a Hamilton career criminal sentenced to life in prison for murdering a man named Billy Mason as revenge over a drug deal gone wrong, then burning Mason’s body and stuffing the ashes in farm animal feedbags.

But as I cracked open my notebook at the table and turned on my tape recorder, Huard’s first words to me were: “So, what’s in it for me?”

What’s in it for him? He wanted to get paid. Of course he did, I thought, reprimanding myself for not anticipating this.

I knew my answer would make or break my pipeline to Ed Huard, and thus a key source into what makes Jeremy Hall tick.

This meeting with Huard, in the summer of 2013, was one early hurdle I had to clear in my investigation into a story that ultimately became a seven-part series in The Hamilton Spectator called “Remorseless” about the life and crimes of Hall.

Earlier that year Spec editor-in-chief Paul Berton had called me into his office to pitch the Hall story to me. Hall was well-known to readers from our coverage of his first-degree murder trial. I had written a number of series in the past that detailed homicide investigations, but Paul wanted the focus entirely on the killer, and how he came to exist in our midst.

There were several challenges.

One, Hamilton’s Police Chief is, to put it mildly, not media-friendly. He told his officers not to meet with me for any reason, much less to discuss Hall.

Two, I wrote Jeremy Hall a letter and he agreed to a jailhouse interview, but the warden refused to let me see him.

Three, a lawyer (not Hall’s) warned me early on about “taking on Hall” in a story because, the lawyer said, Hall was still dangerous, even from prison. That got me thinking about whether my personal safety was at issue. I tackled this last obstacle by speaking at length with my supervising editor, Cheryl Stepan, who was as usual completely supportive of my concerns, and also with a Crown attorney and a detective who had faced off against Hall years ago. I came to believe that having journalists murdered was almost certainly not Hall’s thing.

As for the other obstacles: Active Hamilton Police officers would not go on the record with me, but a couple of retired cops, no longer under the chief’s wing, and who investigated Hall, helped me considerably. One officer drove me out to the scene in a remote country field where Hall shot Mason, and I used colour from that scene to lead the series.

I mined court transcripts and, critically, combed through documents at the Court of Appeal in Toronto, to write dialogue and detail the investigation. I landed interviews with all three lawyers on Hall’s defence team, and both Crown attorneys who prosecuted, even though they were all initially and understandably reticent.

Most importantly, I was able to access Hall’s views from jail even though the

warden had turned me down, by submitting written questions to Hall, which he answered in impressive detail, laced with his trademark cursing. For the first time ever, Jeremy Hall, who never testified in court, told of his crimes and childhood, and I was able to capture his voice in an unvarnished portrait of his life.

As for the afternoon that Ed Huard, Hall’s one-time, would-be hit-man (he never did pull the trigger), asked “what’s in it for me?” I chose my words in response to him carefully.

“Nothing is in it for you,” I said to him.

“Except telling the truth.”

I told him the Spectator does not pay for interviews, but that he had already told the truth in court, testifying against Hall, and I hoped he would do it for me as well so I could write a detailed and accurate story. I left the ball in his hands that day.

He called me a few days later and said he would do it, we scheduled a second meeting, and he gave a terrific interview.

The series’ title came from a question I submitted to Hall about one of his many tattoos. Why did he have one that read “remorseless?” Hall replied that a judge had called him remorseless to his face in court years ago over an assault charge.

A transcript I read confirmed it. So Hall got that tattoo as if to say, you want to see remorseless? Here it is, right on my skin.

So the series title became Remorseless, because Jeremy Hall was, and was not, remorseless for all that he had done. A life, even a criminal and murderous life like Hall’s, is never black and white.

Some readers in the community were offended by the series, thinking it sympa-

32 MEDIA

A BRUTAL MURDER: Jeremy Hall was a Hamilton career criminal sentenced to life in prison for murdering a man named Billy Mason (pictured above) as revenge over a drug deal gone wrong, then burning Mason’s body and stuffing the ashes in farm animal feedbags.

PHOTO CREDIT: Special to The Hamilton Spectator

thetic to Hall. But Remorseless was not a sympathetic portrayal, it was, I believe, a brutally honest one. I received an angry phone call from a reader after the series ran, who felt it was unjust to the victim, Billy Mason, that the story was all about his killer. I understood her point of view, and calls like that are hard to take. In the end I was proud of the story and was glad when it was over. The series won a CAJ Award in investigations, and also a National Newspaper Award in the same category. The recognition felt gratifying, although I never set out to write a story with an award in mind.

Jennifer O’Brien, Kate Dubinski, Randy Richmond, Derek Ruttan and Jonathan Sher, London Free Press for peeling back the layers of a group home fire story to reveal a shocking neglect of mentally ill residents in Ontario http://www.nna-ccj.ca/finalists/ CAJ finalists Keith Gerein Condition Critical Edmonton Journal Robert Cribb Presumed Guilty Toronto Star Marco Chown Oved Mining and International Aid Toronto Star / R. James Traers International Corresponding Fellowship Jayme Poisson, Emily Mathieu, Randy Risling Sexual Assault on Canadian Campuses Toronto Star

WEIGHING THE DANGER: A lawyer warned me early on about “taking on (Jeremy) Hall” in a story because he was still dangerous, even from prison. That got me thinking about whether my personal safety was at issue. I came to believe that having journalists murdered was almost certainly not Hall’s thing.

PHOTO CREDIT: Special to The Hamilton Spectator

Tip Sheet One, always look for alternative sources when roadblocks are in your way: people, documents, geographic scenes.

There are many ways to gather detail, even when it looks like you’ve got nothing.

Two, be patient with sources. That is, be aggressive when necessary, but try to let them come to you. If they want to talk, they will. If they refuse, don’t dwell on it, find a way around it, seek other voices, don’t stop gathering, or thinking about ways into your story.

Jon Wells writes feature stories for The Hamilton Spectator and has had seven books published, the most recent, “Death’s Shadow” (Dundurn). He’s a graduate of Western University (Political Science) and Carleton University (Masters Journalism).

For exclusive content, stories, interviews about journalism turn to Media.

Visit http://www.caj.ca/media-magazine-archives/ Issues date back to the spring of 1998 2015 AWARD EDITION

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NNA – Explanatory Work

THE FORGOTTEN MAN: Robert Sinclair holds a portrait of his first cousin Brian Sinclair at a news conference after Provincial court Judge Ray Wyant said in a ruling that the legal aid rate which the government has offered to the family to date is inadequate for their participation in an inquest that will be lengthy and complicated. Brian Sinclair, a disabled aboriginal man, died in Sept. 2008, after waiting 34 hours in the emergency room of the Health Sciences Centre.

PHOTO CREDIT: WAYNE GLOWACKI/Winnipeg Free Press

For “34 Hours: While He Waited,” study of racism in Manitoba hospitals Winnipeg Free Press Kevin Rollason

H

ow could someone die in the waiting room of Winnipeg’s busiest hospital emergency department? How could someone sit there for 34 hours without receiving treatment?

And how could someone be dead there for up to seven hours without anyone noticing?

Those were just some of the questions I had when I was assigned to cover the months-long inquest examining the death of Brian Sinclair at the Health Sciences Centre in Winnipeg in Sept. 2008.

While my daily coverage focused on the witnesses who were testifying during the inquest, I also had the opportunity to look deeper into what happened. This resulted in the writing of the feature 34 Hours: While He Waited.

The inquest found that Sinclair died of a treatable bladder infection caused by a blocked urinary catheter. He had been dead for so long that when doctors tried to revive him they found that rigor mortis was already setting in. Video evidence was played at the inquest which showed Sinclair arrive at emergency, talk briefly to a triage aide who scribbled something down on a piece of paper, and then go into the waiting area of the emergency department

where, except for a brief period when he rolled his wheelchair past the triage desk looking like he was trying to figure out why somebody else had been called before him, he spent the next 34 hours.

The video also showed that Sinclair sat in his wheelchair where numerous people, both hospital staff and patients, walked back and forth whether to go to the washroom, get a snack, or go to the main area of the hospital.

I’ve said before that when I first went to the inquest, all I knew about Sinclair was that he was aboriginal, had lost both his legs to severe frostbite the year before his death, so he used a wheelchair to get around. He was homeless. He had died without getting lifesaving treatment at the Health Sciences Centre.

But within the first few minutes of the inquest beginning I was surprised to learn I was wrong about one thing. Sinclair was not homeless. In fact, not only was he under the supervision of the province’s Public Trustee’s Office, but he had also been living for months in a personal care facility funded by the province.

Where did we and our readers learn Sinclair was homeless? Spokespeople for the hospital announced this in the days follow-

ing Sinclair’s death, and it was a mistake that has continued to be repeated by Winnipeggers and media outlets – including on occasion, my own – in the years since.

And it’s a mistake that fuels a perception with many people that somehow Sinclair’s death was caused in part by himself.

During the days, weeks and months of the inquest – and before the judge came out with his final report – I began wondering about the 199 other patients who passed through the same emergency room doors that Sinclair went through, but who did receive treatment. A few of those patients testified at the inquest, but their evidence focused mostly on the questions of ‘did you see Sinclair and what did you see happening around him?’ I wanted to find out more about what treatment they received while Sinclair sat in his wheelchair in the department’s waiting room and whether those illnesses were so critical or time-consuming that it resulted in Sinclair being missed.

I’ve covered court cases numerous times – I was once the Free Press’ courts reporter – and I know the best way to fully cover a case, whether it’s a murder trial or an inquest, is to be there full-time.

But I also know that’s a luxury and even

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more so when we’re in a time of declining numbers of staff due to cutbacks. It has become tougher for newspapers to take a reporter out of the mix to cover one story full-time. Thankfully, my editors at the Free Press decided we would cover the inquest daily.

Through the days and weeks of tweeting, writing short stories for our website, and longer stories for the newspaper, and as I learned about what happened during the weekend Sinclair was there, I began thinking about why others received care while Sinclair did not.

Yes, there were some days where the stories weren’t as dramatic as other days, but it was only by sitting there daily that the pieces of my explanatory feature began coming together.

I had noticed that the Crown attorneys would always introduce a witness, who had been a patient there, by looking at a document and verifying the time they arrived at the hospital and when they left.

A few times the document appeared to be used to verify why the patient was there.

It was this lengthy document, dozens of pages long, and one which I only received after having to make a formal request to the inquest judge himself. That document formed the foundation for my story. Much of the feature was taking these pages filled with raw information and statistics and distilling it into what I hoped was a reader-friendly story along with a timeline to show what was happening in the emergency room while Sinclair was there. I also added in the comments of the patients or family members who were there at the time and who saw Sinclair, as well as commentary by emergency room experts.

The feature explored issues of bed 2015 AWARDS EDITION

Finalists Josh Wingrove and Chris Hannay, The Globe and Mail, for their explanation of Bill C-23, the Fair Elections Act, which changes the rules for voters, candidates, parties and the people whose job it is to make sure elections are fair http://www.theglobeandmail.com/ news/politics/fair-elections-act/article17648947/ Marie-Claude Malboeuf, Montreal La Presse, for her examination of the hidden marketplace within the web, often called “the deep web” Marie-Claude Malboeuf http://recherche.lapresse.ca/cyberpresse/search/theme/ lapresse/?fq[]=facet_author:MarieClaude+Malboeuf

shortages in the hospital. Issues of patient flow. The patients who take up beds when they should be in long-term care facilities.

The allegations of racism in the emergency room. The perception that a person like Sinclair would only be in the waiting room not for care, but because it was a safe place to get off the street and go to sleep.

The Winnipeg Regional Health Authority implemented changes in the days and weeks after Sinclair’s death.

The inquest judge came up with 63 recommendations which the Health Sciences Centre and the provincial government continue to implement.

The hope is that through my story that our readers – and medical and government officials – could get a better idea what was going on during the 34 hours Sinclair was in the waiting room, and see why changes needed to be made.

Tip Sheet

For those reporters not able to cover an inquest or a court hearing on a daily basis, it becomes essential to build up sources and have good relations with all of the players involved.

You also need to get contact information. So make sure you speak with the Crown attorneys, the defence counsels, and the lawyers representing the hospitals, nursing unions, and indigenous organizations.

Also make contact with the surviving family members who may only be there on the opening day of the inquest, or sporadically through the months. These are all people who can help you decide whether to cover the day’s hearings by letting you know which witnesses are coming on a given day, and what they are expected to say.

Kevin Rollason is a reporter at the Winnipeg Free Press. He graduated from the University of Windsor’s communication studies program and received a Master of Journalism degree from Western University. Kevin has been at the Free Press since 1988. Before that, after graduation, he was with the Winnipeg Sun from 1985 to 1988. He has covered the law courts, city hall, and also specialized in health, aviation, and philanthropic issues.

He can be reached at Kevin.rollason@ freepress.mb.ca 35

NNA– Beat Reporting

GRIEVING HER LOSS: Eileen Mohan is the mother of Chris Mohan, one of two innocent bystanders killed in a Surrey high rise. She supports a police crackdown on gangs.

PHOTO CREDIT: Mark van Manen/Vancouver Sun.

For coverage of crime Vancouver Sun Kim Bolan

A

s the Vancouver Sun’s crime reporter, I won a National Newspaper Award in the `Beats’ Category. That means I entered a portfolio of five stories that I worked on at different points in the year.

It’s always a challenge when you write hundreds of stories on a beat to decide what – if anything – is worthy of entering come awards season. I decided to select stories that represented a wide range of what I covered in 2014.

Two of the stories came out of my coverage of the historic `Surrey Six’ trial, where members of a gang called the Red Scorpions were prosecuted for six 2007 murders, including the deaths of two innocent bystanders.

I included an investigative feature written before the verdict in which I documented how many people whose names were referenced during the trial had died violently. I was able to draw on my knowledge of the local gang scene to expand on the passing references during the trial, and to show how much more widespread the violence was than the Surrey Six murders.

I also entered the story I wrote on verdict day, which was more of an analysis of the verdict and what had persuaded the judge to convict the two accused on all counts.

I decided I needed to show the judges deadline work as well, so included a story about a police officer charged with murder after shooting an armed suspect during an Emergency Response Team take-down.

And the final two stories were investigative and revealed that Mexican cartels sent point people to Metro Vancouver to broker major deals with local gangs. I managed to dig up a lot of documentation proving this was happening.

How I got them: I was lucky enough to attend the Surrey Six trial every day it sat over an entire year. I tweeted the trial in live time. I wrote a couple of stories each day. But I still had a lot of additional information and material that I wanted to expand on.

Given that it was a judge-alone trial, I could do interviews and dig up information related to what I was hearing in court without jeopardizing the fair-trial rights of the accused. I was struck by the number of names that came out in passing that I knew from my beat coverage were people who had died violently. Sometimes only STORY LINKS: Surrey Six story links: 1)http://www.vancouversun.com/ news/Surrey+2007+slaughter+spark ed+vicious+gang+bodies+still+pili ng/10250010/story.html 2) http://www.vancouversun.com/mobile/story.html?id=10256128 Cop story: http://www.vancouversun.com/news/ Delta+police+officer+charged+with+ murder+after+2012+Starlight+Casino +standoff/10308119/story.html Cartel stories: 1) http://www.vancouversun.com/ news/Cartel+connection+Mexico+dru g+gangs+shop+Vancouver/10461724/ story.html 2) http://www.vancouversun.com/ news/Cartel+Connection+part+Dirty +money+successful+sting/10465070/ story.html

a nickname was mentioned, but I jotted them all down and cross-referenced them with other gang files I had and wrote the first feature. The Sun ran it just before the verdict.

My verdict story was written after a really long day. I had already filed two or three earlier versions when the desk asked me for something fresh. I honestly was so tired that I was going to say no.

But I stepped back and reflected on the whole trial and it struck me that the only reason these gangsters were convicted was because their former associates had turned on them. So that’s what I wrote.

The story I wrote about the Delta cop charged with murder was really just a typical breaking story where you try to find out as much as you can and write it all up on deadline. What distinguished that story from others was that I was able to determine that he was the first officer in B.C. charged with murder in decades and that all the other cases had collapsed.

Interestingly, the charge was stayed a few months later.

The final two beat stories on the cartels took me weeks to pull together. I had seen a reference in a Vancouver court file about a local guy named Ariel Savein being extradited to the U.S. in a money laundering case. That piqued my interest.

So I went into the U.S. court database and starting pulling files. So much of the material was sealed that I really had to go on a fishing expedition, pulling related cases or only using file numbers to see if I could find more documents.

It was really fun digging. I also talked to police and gang sources and was able to get copies of the transcripts of interviews with some of the Mexicans who had been arrested here.

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The obstacles The main obstacle that I encountered really impacts all beat reporters – time management. I get so many tips and could spend all my time doing investigative or enterprise stories. But I also have to cover daily stories in order to properly work my beat. So striking the right balance is a challenge.

With my Surrey Six features, I would make notes of interesting things in court that I wanted to follow up on. I kept files and I grabbed police and prosecutors in the hallways to check on things that I felt warranted more coverage. Then when there was a break in the trial, I scrambled to get the bigger stories done.

I had more challenges with my cartel stories. I received some pretty nasty calls and emails trying to stop me from exposing some people who were involved in the cases.

That was unpleasant. Some cops were also trying to shut me down, as I was trying to get more information. But others really came through for me, which was great. Managing the volume of material and all the names was also an obstacle.

But I came up with systems to narrow the material I was using to those with a definite Vancouver link.

2015 AWARDS EDITION

Tip Sheet Never limit yourself to the assignments that are handed to you on a daily basis.

Even if you’re a general assignment reporter, try to find time in your schedule to go after enterprise or investigative stories

FINALISTS The Globe and Mail Josh Wingrove, Steven Chase, Ann Hui, Joe Friesen and Ian Brown for capturing the drama of the shooting on Parliament Hill Moncton Times & Transcript \ A team of journalists for coverage of the shooting rampage that left three RCMP officers dead and two wounded Montreal La Presse A team of journalists for coverage of the deliberate ramming of two Canadian Forces soldiers in St-Jeansur-Richelieu http://www.nna-ccj.ca/finalists/

or even just interesting features.

Develop systems for managing information, interviews and documents on longerterm projects. Create a timeline so you can take advantage of breaks in daily coverage to dig into something deeper.

Talk to other reporters. Sometimes working with a partner allows you to complete an investigation faster with a better story resulting from the collaboration.

Never overlook the sources that are right there in front of you. I can find something in a court ruling or document that isn’t meaningful to other reporters because I’ve had the advantage of being on my beat for a long time.

Kim Bolan covers gangs, terrorism, drugs and justice for The Vancovuer Sun. This is her second NNA win. The first was for her coverage of Robert Pickton. Bolan has been on the front lines of B.C. crime coverage stretching all the way back to the 1985 Air India bombing.

In 2014, she covered the trial and verdict for the 2007 Surrey Six murder case, as well as a two-part series on Mexican cartels setting up shop in B.C. Bolan also writes a popular blog called The Real Scoop, and can be reached at 604-2195740 or kbolan@vancouversun.com 37

NNA – Short Feature For a reappraisal of what it was like to be a woman reporting on the Polytechnique massacre Ottawa Citizen Shelley Page

W

hen my reporting on the largest mass murder of women in Canadian history garnered congratulations from my male editors and male colleagues, it should have been a red flag that I had failed on many counts.

If I wasn’t making readers, especially men, feel uncomfortable about the misogyny-fuelled slaughter, then my choice of adjectives and imagery, interviews and omissions, were constructed in a way that did not challenge the prevailing societal script about the place of women in our society; or expose the sexist continuum that made women targets of rape, assault and murder and kept them out of leadership roles in newsrooms and engineering schools and beyond.

But that insight is hindsight – twentyfive years’ worth.

On Dec. 6, 1989, I was a young reporter sent by my then-employer, the Toronto Star, to cover the massacre at L’Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal. For six days I wrote about the killer, the victims and the grieving family. I shied away from interviewing so-called angry feminists. At the time, their place in mainstream media was uncertain.

As the 25th anniversary approached, I pitched a piece to a Star editor suggesting I revisit the event. When I did not hear back, I offered a piece to the Ottawa Citizen, where I had worked for 22 years before taking the buyout in 2012 to work in the non-profit sector. Editor Andrew

Potter commissioned the piece.

As I re-read archived stories, and the analysis by academics, I started to reevaluate who I’d interviewed and who I’d excluded all those years ago, along with the phrases I’d chosen to describe the murdered women and how I’d steered clear of any truly outraged women. I watched a 1995 film Reframing the Montreal Massacre: A media interrogation by Maureen Bradley, now a professor at the University of Victoria, who asserted that the mainstream media had silenced so-called ‘angry feminists’ and used “social gatekeeping” to make the story more palatable.

It was an ‘aha’ moment for me. I’d done exactly that, whether subconsciously, or to get a pat on the head from my male editors. In my remembrance, on Dec. 6, 2014, I confessed: “I fear I sanitized the event of its feminist anger and then infantilized and diminished the victims, turning them from elite engineering students who’d fought for a place among men into teddy-bear loving daughters, sisters and girlfriends.

“My reporting was, no doubt, coloured by the response I got from male editors —and I had only male editors—when I pitched stories on women’s issues (not exactly front-page news in the 1980s) and by the way I’d had to negotiate minefields of gender politics just to get hired. I felt lucky to have been sent to cover the tragedy at all.”

I also reflected on how Barbara Frum,

one of Canada’s most respected journalists, refused to admit on CBC’s The Journal that the massacre was indeed an act of violence toward women.

“Why do we diminish it by suggesting that it was an act against just one group?”

Frum asked on CBC’s The Journal following the slaughter.

“If it was 14 men would we be having vigils? Isn’t violence the monstrosity here?”

I wrote, “She refused to even utter the word feminist. But then, her neutralizing of feminist anger must have resonated, and perhaps was reflexive. Maureen Bradley, in her documentary, wondered about Frum’s stance: “Was it necessary to deny any shred of feminism in herself in order to get where she was in this bureaucratic, media institution, boys’ club?”’

That’s such a provocative question, as much today as it was 25 years ago. As female journalists—still the odd ducks at the morning news meetings and a rarity on mastheads and in exec producer chairs— what do we keep to ourselves for fear of seeming ‘uppity,’ ‘no fun’ or ‘shrill?”

And how does our reticence, silence and complicity, impact how we cover stories then? And now?

And what price do we pay if we are our authentic selves in pursuit of the news?

Just as Jill Abramson, former executive editor of the New York Times who was unceremoniously sacked in early 2015 for a dispute over salary inequities, ingrained

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(From left to right) Anne-Marie Edward, Anne-Marie Lemay, Annie St-Arnaud, Annie Turcotte, Barbara Daigneault, Barbara Lkucznik, Geneviève Bergeron, Helen Colgan, Maryse Laganière, Maryse Leclair, Maud Haviernick, Michèle Richard, Nathalie Croteau, Sonia Pelletier PHOTO CREDITS: Ecole Polytechnique sexism, or both.

Vivian Smith’s recent book, Outsiders Still: Why Women Journalists Love— and Leave—Their Newspaper Careers (University of Toronto Press; 2015) is an examination of that. Smith notes that women account for only about one third of editorial workers in Canadian newspapers.

Only four of the country’s top 25 papers had women editors-in-chief in 2014. But I digress.

In order to write the remembrance, I reevaluated everything I’d written, including a sentence I’d crafted with particular pride: “They stood crying before the coffins of strangers, offering roses and tiger lilies to young women they never knew.”

In hindsight, it showed everything that was wrong with how I covered the event. I wrote in my remembrance: “I turned the dead engineering students into sleeping beauties who received flowers from potential suitors. I should have referred to the buildings they wouldn’t design, the machines they wouldn’t create and the products never imagined.”

After my article ran in the Citizen, I heard from hundreds of journalists, both 2015 AWARDS EDITION

Finalists Michèle Ouimet, Montreal La Presse, for an intimate portrait of a former municipal politician stricken with cancer Michelle Shephard, Toronto Star, for shedding light on the ongoing tragedy that is Somalia http://www.nna-ccj.ca/finalists/ female and male, female engineers and engineering students.

Among them was Wendy Gentleman, an associate professor in the faculty of Engineering at Dalhousie University, who’d contacted me after my Dec. 6, 2014, piece ran. At the time of the massacre, she was a first-year engineering undergraduate at McGill University. She gives a lecture about the massacre every Dec. 6.

In a letter of support for my piece, she wrote, “I hadn’t appreciated that I — as a reader — was doing what she [Ms. Page] — as the writer — had subconsciously

done: let years of subtle societal conditioning sanitize our reactions and discussions.”

She added, “For my part in maintaining de-sanitized discussions on these topics, I have chosen to share Ms. Page’s piece with my engineering students, and to quote verbatim from her profoundly affecting closing commentary in my December 6th ceremony presentation.”

On a personal note, my teenage daughter went to an engineering camp this past summer and is considering studying engineering at university.

After my piece appeared, I was dismayed to hear from so many female engineers who said their faculties and places of work are still unwelcoming to women.

For the sake of my daughter and her cohort, I hope the doors at the top open wider, whether they decide to become engineers — or journalists.

Shelley Page was a journalist for 27 years before joining a global non-profit organization as Strategic Communications Director and Executive Editor. She is cowriting a documentary, Talent Untapped, on people with disabilities in the workforce.

39

NNA – Sports Photography Toronto Sun For capturing the desperation of a tennis player trying to get the ball over the net Stan Behal

I

knew it was going to be a good match at the Rogers Cup, but I had no idea just how good it was going to be.

Novak Djokovic, ranked world No. 1 in men’s singles tennis was playing Gaël Sébastien Monfils, who was reaching a career-high singles, ranking 7th in the world.

Professional tennis is a sport I truly love to cover and have played all my life.

These days, as newspaper photographers are being asked to be take on more responsibilities as multi-media journalists, the opportunity to deliver quality content and concentrate on one’s preferred skill diminishes greatly.

Because of licensing agreements, professional sports restricts what we can focus on. So actual events provide sports photographers with opportunities to focus on their craft, chances that rarely exist in our day-to-day jobs.

Tennis has everything: speed, strength and agility. For me, the sport has always exciting to shoot.

The technology has changed dramatically since the first matches I photographed as a spectator at the Canadian Open, watching Bjorn Borg, John McEnroe, and Jimmy Connors.

They were playing with wooden Dunlop

Maxply and Donnay tennis racquets.

My camera’s technology was extremely primitive with a strictly manual focus.

With current autofocus and exposure and 14 frame-per-second bursts, the task of capturing award-winners is easier than it used to be.

However, the photographer must still have good timing, proper framing, persistence, focus -- and luck.

When I attempt to capture the ball on the end of the racquet being compressed by an incredibly powerful swing, I often shoot single frame and not try to rely on the speed of the camera to catch that split second of action, because often, even with 14 frames per second, the best action is between frames.

Early in the match, I spent a few minutes on each player, single-framing action and attempting to capture that predictable peak tennis action shot.

I then settled in with the camera set to multiple frames to watch and hopefully capture some great tennis.

As tempting as it was to stop photographing and watch, I rarely took my eye from the back of the camera for fear of missing an unpredictable, photographic opportunity.

I primarily chose to watch Monfils, who

Finalists Toronto Raptors forward Tyler Hansbrough (back) tumbles over Chicago Bulls centre Joakim Noah (13) during second half NBA action in Toronto on Thursday, November 13, 2014.

Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press

is known for his passion, acrobatics, and unpredictability on court.

Then the moment came.

Djokovic drilled a great passing shot that Monfils knew he couldn’t reach. So out of desperation, or for fun, he lunged at the ball in my direction, stretched his hand and tossed his racquet at the ball. I shot a burst of frames.

Amazingly, the racquet hit the ball which flew back over the net.

The outcome was predictable.

Djokovic easily returned the shot to a racketless opponent, and then went on to win the match.

Only one of my frames was sharp. Fortunately, it had all the elements: the ball, the racquet in mid-air, his outstretched hand, his fabulous intense expression, and his flying hair.

The best shot that day, and maybe that year, did not come from covering the winner.

In addition to his 2014 NNA for sports photography, Stan Behal won the 1988 National Newspaper Award -Sports Photography for Ben Wins Gold in Seoul, Korea, and the 1996 National Press Photographers Association award for ‘GailForce Win’ (Gail Devers Wins Gold in Atlanta, U.S.A.)

THE DESPERATE LUNGE: Gael Monfils (FRA) dives desperately for the ball in action against number one ranked Novak Djokovic (SRB).

Monfils took the match to three sets, but lost in the tie-breaker at the Rogers Cup Tennis Tournament at the Rexall Centre in Toronto on Wednesday, August 6, 2014.

Vancouver Canucks Derek Dorsett, left, fights New Jersey Devils Seth Helgeson at Rogers Arena in Vancouver on November 25, 2014.

Photo by Ric Ernst/ The Province/ Vancouver Sun

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2015 AWARDS EDITION

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