Globe and Mail leads National Newspaper Award nominations with 16 finalists

TORONTO – The Globe and Mail has captured the most nominations for the 2014 National Newspaper Awards with 16 entries on the list of finalists.

The Toronto Star is second with 11, followed by Montreal’s La Presse with eight. The Canadian Press landed five nominations.

The Vancouver Sun, the Ottawa Citizen and the Moncton Times & Transcript nabbed three apiece.

Five other newspapers each have two nominations: Winnipeg Free Press, London Free Press, Halifax Chronicle Herald, National Post, and the Hamilton Spectator.

Twelve other organizations received one nomination each. The awards will be handed out May 22 in Toronto.

In all, the NNA Awards office announced Wednesday a total of 71 finalists in 22 categories, selected from 1,297 entries. Here are the nominees:

_ Arts and Entertainment: Simon Houpt, Globe and Mail, for his examination of parasitic enterprises, content thieves, and the online efforts of a former radio shock jock; Vinay Menon, Toronto Star, for a profile of CBC anchor Peter Mansbridge, a look at the Beatles’ 1964 visit to Toronto, and Jeopardy! as a pop culture phenomenon; Kate Taylor, Globe and Mail, for a profile of prison book clubs, the effects of the arts on the human brain, and boosting Canadian production with profits from sales of spectrum rights.

_ Beat Reporting: Kim Bolan, Vancouver Sun, for coverage of crime; San Grewal, Toronto Star, for coverage of urban affairs; Nick Martin, Winnipeg Free Press, for coverage of education; Jane Sims, London Free Press, for coverage of justice and the courts.

_ Breaking News: Canadian Press team for coverage of the shooting on Parliament Hill; 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 team for coverage of the shooting rampage that left three RCMP officers dead and two wounded; Montreal La Presse team for coverage of the deliberate ramming of two Canadian Forces soldiers in St-Jean-sur-Richelieu.

_ Business: Tavia Grant, Globe and Mail, for her investigation into asbestos, the single-biggest workplace killer in Canada; Martin Regg Cohn, Toronto Star, for his coverage of The Beer Store and its retail monopoly in Canada’s biggest province; Grant Robertson, Globe and Mail, for his series on the government’s effort to move marijuana sales from the back alley to the capital markets.

_ Columns: Pete McMartin, Vancouver Sun, for columns on marriage, playing catch, and weddings; Russell Wangersky, St. John’s Telegram, for columns on violent assault, memory, and journalism today; Konrad Yakabuski, Globe and Mail, for columns on assisted suicide, the loonie, and Tim Cook.

_ Editorial Cartooning: Michael de Adder, Halifax Chronicle Herald; Brian Gable, Globe and Mail; Bruce MacKinnon, Halifax Chronicle Herald.

_ Editorials: Sarah O’Donnell, Edmonton Journal; André Pratte, Montreal La Presse; John Roe, Waterloo Region Record.

_ Explanatory Work: Marie-Claude Malboeuf, Montreal La Presse, for her examination of the hidden marketplace within the web, often called “the deep web; Kevin Rollason, Winnipeg Free Press, for his study of bed shortages, clogged emergency rooms and the role racism plays in Manitoba hospitals; Josh Wingrove and Chris Hannay, 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.

_ Feature Photo: John Lehmann, Globe and Mail, for a photo of staff and students watching a spectacular Aurora Borealis; Lucas Oleniuk, Toronto Star, for capturing a dove landing and returning to its loft; Julie Oliver, Ottawa Citizen, for an image that tells the story of a young boy’s struggle with skin disease.

_ International: Mark MacKinnon, Globe and Mail, for coverage of the conflict in Ukraine and the angry resurgence of Vladimir Putin’s Russia; Scott Simmie, Toronto Star, for stories on the experience of migrants fleeing North Africa; Jennifer Wells, Toronto Star, for revisiting the horror of Bhopal, site of the world’s worst industrial accident.

_ Investigations: Kevin Donovan, Jesse Brown and Jacques Gallant, Toronto Star, for their investigation of allegations of sexual assault by CBC Host Jian Ghomeshi; Katia Gagnon, Montreal La Presse, for her investigation into the permissiveness on the part of general practitioners and pharmacists in dispensing morphine; Jennifer O’Brien, Kate Dubinski, Randy Richmond 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; Jon Wells, Hamilton Spectator, for “Remorseless,” a look into how a brutal murderer was created, and what led to his implosion and conviction.

_ Local Reporting: Tim Smith, Brandon Sun, for an intimate story of a family struggling with cancer; Moncton Times & Transcript team, for coverage of a shooting rampage that left three RCMP officers dead and two wounded; Christine Morris, New Brunswick Telegraph-Journal, for a three-part series on Lyme disease in New Brunswick.

_ Long Feature: Christopher Curtis, Montreal Gazette, for “On Patrol in Opitciwan,” shadowing a First Nation police force as it confronts poverty, substance abuse and crowded living conditions; Sandra Martin, Globe and Mail, for “Kim’s Choice,” the story of a hardworking Ontario family beset by Huntington’s Disease; Barb Pacholik, Regina Leader Post, for “Betrayal: What do you do when you discover your friend is a pedophile?; Patrick White, Globe and Mail, for “Solitary: A Death Sentence,” revealing a corrections system out of step with much of the developed world.

_ Multimedia Feature: Gabrielle Duchaine and Caroline Touzin, Montreal La Presse, for a three-part interactive look at crime in all its facets in Quebec and Montreal; Teri Pecoskie, Hamilton Spectator, for a five-part series uncovering the connections between standardized test scores and a range of social and economic factors; Toronto Star team, for coverage commemorating the 100th anniversary of the start of the First World War, including a walk of the Western Front.

_ News Feature Photo: Andrew Vaughan, Canadian Press, for a photo of the funeral procession for three RCMP officers killed in the line of duty in Moncton; Peter Power, Canadian Press, for his photo of the son of Cpl. Nathan Cirillo waving a flag at the funeral of his father; Peter Power, Canadian Press, for his image depicting two dogs peering out from beneath the fence at Cpl. Nathan Cirillo’s house.

_ News Photo: Tony Caldwell, Ottawa Sun, for a photo of a topless protester confronting the archbishop of Quebec; Wayne Cuddington, Ottawa Citizen, for capturing the willingness of strangers to help a fallen soldier; Viktor Pivovarov, Moncton Times & Transcript, for a dramatic image of the shooter in Moncton.

_ Politics: Sean Fine, Globe and Mail, for digging deep to describe the selection process for Supreme Court justices; Gloria Galloway, Globe and Mail, for looking into the dispersal of $200 million dealing with veterans’ mental health issues; Vincent Marissal, Montreal La Presse, for describing how the Parti Québecois came to adopt a radical Charter of Quebec Values.

_ Presentation: Jason Chiu, Globe and Mail; National Post team; Raina Toomey and Gayle Grin, Postmedia Central Hub.

_ Project of the Year: Susan Zielinski and Myles Fish, Red Deer Advocate, for a project on the Michener Centre, one of Canada’s last large institutional homes for the mentally challenged; Jessica Barrett, Calgary Herald, for a five-part series examining how the way our relationship to work in Canada is fundamentally changing; Globe and Mail team for chronicling the physical, mental and financial toll of thalidomide, a Canadian public-health disaster that had faded from the public’s memory; Toronto Star team for creating an in-depth discussion with the citizens of Toronto to identify the civic issues they cared about most.

_ Short Feature: Michèle Ouimet, Montreal La Presse, for an intimate portrait of a former municipal politician stricken with cancer; Shelley Page, Ottawa Citizen, for a reappraisal of what it was like to be a woman reporting on the Polytechnique massacre; Michelle Shephard, Toronto Star, for shedding light on the ongoing tragedy that is Somalia.

_ Sports: 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; Jim Coyle, Steve Russell, Paul Hunter and Jim Rankin, Toronto Star, for stories that provided an up-close look at two local hockey teams and how the game is lived by the players and experienced by the communities in which they play; Joe O’Connor, National Post, for his coverage of an African-American inner-city 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.

_ Sports Photo: Stan Behal, Toronto Sun, for a photo capturing the desperation of a tennis player trying to get the ball over the net; Ric Ernst, Vancouver Sun, for a photo showing how Canuck fans feel about fighting in hockey; Frank Gunn, Canadian Press, for capturing the exertion and tension of a split-second play.