Judges for 2024

Arts and Entertainment

Trevor Green is a journalist and Indigenous scholar, who is affiliated with his mother’s Cowichan nation. He teaches reporting at Toronto Metropolitan University’s School of Journalism and at Sheridan College. A PhD student in the communications and culture program at York University, his research examines the relationships between journalism institutions and Indigenous communities. His radio work has been produced at CBC Radio and other places. Born and raised in northern British Columbia, for over a decade he lived in Stratford Ont, with William Whitehead, helping his late spouse manage the literary estate of Timothy Findley.

Katherine Monk is a best-selling author, filmmaker and journalist who began her career as a general news reporter at the Vancouver Sun in 1990, and ended it as a national film critic for Postmedia/Canwest News Service in 2015. Author of Weird Sex & Snowshoes – And Other Canadian Film Phenomena, and more recently, Joni: The Creative Odyssey of Joni Mitchell, she set out to better understand the idiosyncrasies of Canadian culture and to celebrate our differences. She currently lives in Vancouver, where she’s happily settled into retirement.

Zulekha Nathoo is a network host and producer with USA TODAY in Atlanta, focusing on human interest features, investigations and social justice. She is also a doctoral student at USC. Nathoo recently covered the U.S. federal election in Washington, D.C., the aftermath of Hurricane Helene in North Carolina and the ongoing fallout from American government cuts. Her multi-platform work has earned multiple honours, including a New York Press Club Award, U.S. National Arts and Entertainment Award and a Southern California Journalism Award. She has written extensively about representation and equality for the BBC and spent a significant part of her career at CBC News as both a local and national TV, audio and digital reporter in Los Angeles, Toronto, Calgary, Montreal, Fredericton and Bathurst.

Joan Hollobon Award for Beat Reporting

Marina Jimenez is the director of communications for the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre and Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation. Previously, she worked as an issues and media strategist for the University of Toronto. During her 25-year journalism career, she worked at six different newsrooms in three provinces, including stints on The Globe and Mail’s editorial board, as a foreign writer for the National Post and as an on-air reporter for CBC Alberta News. She is the proud recipient of the 2003 National Newspaper Award for Beat Reporting, and was an NNA finalist on three other occasions. She continues to work as a freelance travel writer.

George Kalogerakis was a journalist for 30 years, beginning as a police and courts reporter at the Ottawa Citizen and the Montreal Gazette. He worked as city editor and deputy editor at the Gazette, as well as directeur de l’information at Le Journal de Montreal and editor-in-chief of Agence QMI. Since leaving journalism, he has worked as an outreach worker and overnight manager at a homeless shelter in Montreal.

Elise Stolte worked for the Edmonton Journal for more than decade as an investigative reporter, a beat reporter and also city columnist. She has been recognized for feature writing, social-impact and community-based journalism. Elise moved to Calgary and began working at CBC in 2021. She works as an editor and bridge to help communities tell their own stories with the newsroom through workshops and special projects.

Stuart M. Robertson Award for Breaking News

Charles Breton is a political scientist and the executive director of the Centre of Excellence on the Canadian Federation at the Institute for Research on Public Policy in Montreal. Prior to joining the IRPP, he led the research team at Vox Pop Labs, the company behind Vote Compass. In a past life, he was a researcher and journalist for current affairs programs on Radio-Canada. He is a frequent analyst and expert commentator on Canadian politics and public policy.

A former broadcast journalist, Ria Renouf‘s 10-year career included seven award nominations and three wins: two Edward R. Murrows and a Radio Television Digital National Award. Ria anchored and reported for CityNews and Global BC before becoming the editor of New West Anchor in 2022. Today, she runs her own marketing and communications company — RenoufWrites — while also providing communications support for the City of New Westminster and its Crises Response Pilot Project. 

Eve St-Laurent is senior legal counsel to CBC/Radio-Canada, where she has been advising on all matters relating to media law and freedom of the press since 2015. She focuses on supporting investigative journalists in various aspects of their work. Prior to joining the law department, she worked as a journalist for the public broadcaster in Ottawa and Vancouver. 

Business

Stephen Bindman is a visiting professor and executive in residence at the faculty of law (common law section) at the University of Ottawa. He recently retired after 25 years as a senior policy advisor at the Department of Justice Canada. Prior to that, he was national legal affairs correspondent for Southam News and was president of the Canadian Association of Journalists.

Kelly Toughill is an Inglis professor (retired) with the University of King’s College School of Journalism, Writing and Publishing. She was a writer and editor at the Toronto Star for 20 years, and a tenured member of the King’s faculty for 17 years. Her work has twice been honoured by the National Newspaper Awards.

Misha Warbanski has developed a special interest in stories and perspectives from Northern Canada, rural and Indigenous communities. Her career has spanned public broadcasting and Arctic research. Misha recently joined Yukon University as director of marketing communications. She lives in Whitehorse. 

Mary Ann Shadd Cary Award for Columns

Janet Bagnall was a feature writer, editorial writer and columnist during 35 years with the Montreal Gazette, specializing in coverage of children’s and women’s rights. She was a 2008 Women’s Y Women of Distinction laureate and twice an NNA finalist.

Mark Bulgutch spent more than 35 years with CBC News, beginning as a reporter and retiring as the senior executive producer. He has also retired from teaching journalism at Toronto Metropolitan University after 35 years. He has written seven books, including two national bestsellers.

Omayra Issa is an award-winning journalist and anchor. She is currently an anchor at CPAC, connecting Canadians to their democracy. A former national reporter for CBC News, she has been recognized with several RTDNA and Digital Publishing Awards. Fluent in five languages, she has been recognized with the 2024 Reelword Trailblazers Award through her constant and committed efforts to improve and diversify the film and television industry.

Editorial Cartooning

Fabrice de Dongo is a bilingual communications leader with a demonstrated record of building measurable media relations and communications strategies tied to overall business and organizational strategy. His experience spans across organizations in financial and professional services, central banking, provincial and federal government, national policing, and transportation. 

Samia Madwar is a senior editor at The Walrus and has previously held roles at Up Here and Canadian Geographic magazines. She has mentored emerging journalism professionals through programs administered by the Canadian Association of Journalists and the National Media Awards Foundation and has judged the Online Journalism Awards, the Digital Publishing Awards and the National Magazine Awards.

Okenge Yuma Morisho has been a public servant for 25 years. He has significant experience in public policy development and implementation at the federal and provincial levels, and has held several executive positions in Ottawa and Victoria.

Claude Ryan Award for Editorials

Vibhu “Vibz” Gairola is a litigator with a specialty in employment, labour, contract and human rights issues. Prior to entering legal practice, he freelanced for numerous publications including Toronto Life, the Toronto Star, Flare and Reader’s Digest, and he was a senior researcher for Reader’s Digest Canada. He has been a teaching assistant for courses in professional ethics and media law at Toronto Metropolitan University.

Sophie Gaulin has been the executive director and editor-in-chief of La Liberté since 2009. Born in France, in Bordeaux, she studied Canadian civilization at the University of Bordeaux, where she developed a strong interest in Canada. An active member of the media industry, she has proudly served for several years on two boards: the National News Council and News Media Canada. She has also been a judge for the National Newspaper Awards for more than 10 years.

Cybele Sack is a strategy consultant, researcher, writer and editor. She is an award-winning coach for entrepreneurs and startups in all sectors, supporting social innovation competitions. She also works with academic researchers and professionals at the cutting edge of their own disciplines for system transformation. She speaks to large audiences at professional conferences and events, produces and moderates panels and facilitates workshops. She is an experienced plain language and substantive editor for technical documents, journalism, academic initiatives and fiction. As a researcher, she interviews those most impacted and scans documents to find stories others miss. Her work has been published in The Globe and Mail, The New York Times and NOW Magazine and she produced stories for CTV, CBC and TVO.

Explanatory Work

Simona Chiose manages public affairs and engagement strategy for the government relations office at the University of Toronto. She is also a faculty member at the Royal Conservatory of Music, where she has taught courses in public policy and politics, including media start-ups and audience strategies. Previously, she held significant roles at The Globe and Mail, including higher education reporter and editor and assistant news editor. During her journalism career, she worked at The Canadian Press, CityTV and freelanced for a variety of publications. She has a PhD in political science with a focus on immigration policy from the University of Toronto.

Valérie Dufour is a senior manager, strategic communications, at the National Capital Commission in Ottawa. From 2011 to 2020, she worked at the Canadian Association of University Teachers and for the parliamentary communications team of the New Democratic Party. Prior to that, she was a political and investigative reporter in Montréal from 1999 to 2011. During her journalistic career, she worked at La Presse, La Voix de l’Est, Le Devoir, Le Journal de Montréal and RueFrontenac.ca.

Daniel Fontaine is Metis and the CEO at MICHIFCO, a 100-per-cent Indigenous owned-operated consulting firm located in B.C. Daniel is also the former CEO and deputy minister for Metis Nation British Columbia. He has had an extensive career working in government and the non-profit and private sectors. In 2013, Daniel received the Queen’s Jubilee Medal for Public Service. He obtained a political science degree from the University of Manitoba and a certificate in media writing and public relations communications from Langara College. Daniel was a civic affairs columnist with 24 Hours Vancouver and the Orca, and a weekly political commentator on the Bill Good Show on CKNW radio.

Feature Photo

Philip Cheung is a Canadian photographer living and working in Los Angeles. He has extensive experience in the Middle East, where he was previously based. His photographs have been exhibited across North America and Europe, including at the SFO Museum (San Francisco), the National Portrait Gallery (London), the Canadian War Museum (Ottawa) and the Pinchuk Art Centre (Kyiv). The Overseas Press Club of America has recognized Cheung for his documentation of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. His work has been featured and reviewed in various publications, including Harper’s, the British Journal of Photography, Canadian Art, The Washington Post and TIME.

Shane Kelley worked for over 20 years as a photojournalist for three Canadian daily newspapers: the Toronto Sun, the Toronto Star and the Montreal Gazette. In addition to general news and sports photojournalism, she also produced, with text and photos, a weekly trending column for the Montreal Gazette for 15 years. She has also worked for various American newspapers and magazines.

Bruno Schlumberger now delves into urban or street photography after 33 years as a photographer with the Ottawa Citizen. This passion is an ongoing project, which he considers the most challenging form of work and one of the purest forms of photography. It’s all about the discovery of unnamed situations that surround us at all times, transformed into framed images, with no purpose other than showing the mundane view of the world.

Norman Webster Award for International Reporting

David Gutnick worked as a documentary producer at CBC Radio for 36 years. He is working on a rather messy book about abstract painting. His recent audio book for children is No Nothing No Everything. David lives in Montreal.

Athana Mentzelopoulos is the former president and CEO of Alberta Health Services. She spent most of her career in government at both the federal and provincial levels, including as deputy minister for Treasury Board and Finance in both Alberta and British Columbia. She has led work program and policy work in a wide range of areas including financial regulation, insurance, environment protection, consumer product safety, provincial immigration policy and debt management. 

Michelle Richardson is the former editor-in-chief of the Ottawa Citizen. In her current role as chief impact officer of the Royal Canadian Mint, she is focused on developing and supporting the organization’s environmental, social and governance commitments.

George Brown Award for Investigations

Valérie Ouellet is an award-winning broadcast reporter based in Toronto. Her data-driven stories for the CBC News investigative unit often explore women’s health, medical devices, the carceral system, social injustice and systemic inequalities. In 2022, she was awarded the prestigious St. Clair Balfour Fellowship at Massey College. Her stories were nominated multiple times for the CAJ Data Journalism Award, and she won an Amnesty International Media Award for documenting COVID cases in Canadian jails during the pandemic. She teaches data journalism at Toronto Metropolitan University and mentors early-career journalists with the Canadian Association of Journalists.

Martha Troian is an investigative journalist and writer who delves into Indigenous politics, historical injustices, human rights, women’s and environmental issues, and Indigenous empowerment. She writes across multiple genres and has authored the children’s picture book It’s Powwow Time, published by Greenwillow/HarperCollins. Currently, she is working on a non-fiction investigative book and is also writing a play through the Pimootayowin program at the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre. In addition to writing, Martha is a contemporary jeweler. She studied journalism at Carleton University and the University of King’s College.

Fred Vallance-Jones is director of journalism at the University of King’s College in Halifax, where he has been on the faculty for 18 years. When not busy with his administrative duties, he teaches introductory and advanced data journalism courses in the master of journalism program. He is an NNA winner for investigations and a Michener Award nominee. His reporting career spanned 23 years, at the CBC and Hamilton Spectator. He is co-author of three journalism textbooks.

E. Cora Hind Award for Local Reporting

Erica Lenti is the deputy editor, features at Chatelaine. She previously served as a senior editor at Xtra Magazine and editor-in-chief of This Magazine. Her work has appeared in The Globe and Mail, The Walrus, Toronto Life and other North American publications. She lives in Toronto with her wife and beloved one-eyed pup, Belle. 

Rod Mickleburgh was a journalist for over 40 years, 23 of them at The Globe and Mail. He was a co-winner of the Michener Award for reporting on the tainted blood scandal in Canada and served as the Globe’s Beijing bureau chief in the 1990s. Since leaving the Globe in 2013, he has freelanced, blogged and found time to write On the Line, a book about B.C. labour history, which won the George Ryga Award for Social Awareness.

Joslyn Oosenbrug lives in Yellowknife and reported, hosted and produced for CBC North’s radio and television programs (in Whitehorse, Yellowknife and Iqaluit) for more than 12 years. She has an honours degree in environmental science from the University of British Columbia and a background in science education and communication. Oosenbrug currently supports species at risk management and recovery for the government of the Northwest Territories.

William Southam Award for Long Feature

Mark Abley is a former feature writer, book-review editor and language columnist at the Montreal Gazette, where he worked for 16 years. Winner of an NNA for Critical Writing, he has also been shortlisted in the category of International Reporting. He is the author of eight books of non-fiction, four poetry collections and two children’s books.

Caroline Chan works at CBC Vancouver producing audio and video segments for CBC Radio One’s The Early Edition, available on CBC Listen and on streaming channels on Roku TV, YouTube, Apple TV, and other CBC owned-and-operated platforms. She has worked across the country and abroad in various roles including radio host, television news writer and show producer. 

Kate Jaimet is the senior editor of Canada’s History Magazine. Her 30-year career in journalism includes work as a daily news reporter, freelance magazine writer, editor and podcaster. Her Stories behind the History podcast won a silver medal in this year’s Canadian Online Publishing Awards. 

News Photo

Phil Carpenter has worked as a photojournalist for more than 20 years, including 13 years at the Montreal Gazette, and since 2017 he has been a reporter and video reporter for Global News in Montreal. He taught photojournalism and visual journalism at Concordia University for more than 10 years, helping to develop studies for the institution’s visual journalism degree. In 2009, Phil spent a month in Rwanda teaching multimedia journalism as part of a training program for professional journalists. He is the author of Breast Stories, a book that addresses issues of femininity and female identity through the portrait of over 50 women across Canada who have had a mastectomy.

Jeff Harper teaches photojournalism at the University of King’s College in Halifax. Harper has worked as a staff photographer for Metro Halifax, The Halifax Daily News, Chronicle Herald and freelanced for The Globe and Mail, National Post, The Canadian Press and Reuters.

Julie Matus is a photographer, editor and director of photography whose career has spanned more than 25 years with award-winning photographers and journalists. She has worked for the London Free Press, The Canadian Press, Weekly Scoop, GTA Today, Metro Toronto, Torstar’s New Ventures and was the director of photography for Zoomer magazine for more than seven years.

Photo Story

In 2013, Sarah Leen became the first female director of photography for National Geographic Magazine and Partners. For nearly 20 years prior, she worked as an independent photographer for National Geographic magazine until 2004 when she joined the NGM staff as a senior photo editor. As a photographer, she published 16 National Geographic magazine stories, one book and produced six magazine covers. She has won numerous awards for both her photography and photo editing, including College Photographer of the Year, Pictures of the Year and the World Press Photo Award. In 2020, Sarah moved to Maine and began a new career as an independent photo book editor, curator and mentor. She is co-chair of the Board of the International League of Conservation Photographers, a member of the Lucie Awards board of advisors and co-founder of the Visual Thinking Collective.

Andrew Vaughan spent more than 40 years as a photojournalist, 36 years as the Halifax-based national photographer at The Canadian Press. A member of the Atlantic Journalism Hall of Fame, he was nominated for seven National Newspaper Awards and won four times. 

Riziero (Reg) Vertolli has spent 40 years in photojournalism and was the photography director at Metroland Media in Ontario before his retirement. He is now the academic coordinator and instructor for the digital photography certificate at Sheridan College’s continuing education program. He has also served on the advisory board for the photojournalism program at Loyalist College.

John Wesley Dafoe Award for Politics

Graham Fraser is a contributing editor to the Literary Review of Canada, a member of the board of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada and a senior fellow emeritus at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa. His latest book is The Fate of Canada: F. R. Scott’s Journal of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism (2021). From 2006-2016, he was Canada’s Commissioner of Official Languages, and the first chair of the International Association of Language Commissioners. A journalist and author between 1968 and 2006, he worked in Toronto, Montreal, Quebec City, Washington and Ottawa for The Globe and Mail, Maclean’s, the Montreal Gazette and the Toronto Star. He is the author of five books, including Sorry, I Don’t Speak French;  Playing for Keeps, The Making of the Prime Minister, 1988; and René Lévesque and the Parti Québécois in Power.  

Maya Johnson has been reporting at CTV News Montreal for the past two decades and currently anchors CTV News at 5. Fluently bilingual, she also contributes to Noovo Info, Bell Media’s French-language news division. While she has spent most of her journalism career in Montreal covering everything from breaking news to feature stories, she spent five years as Quebec City bureau chief, covering provincial politics at the National Assembly. 

Shannon Miller is a former journalist who worked for two decades in small, medium and large newsrooms in B.C. She held every newsroom role imaginable (and some unimaginable), including managing editor and senior news editor at the Vancouver Province. Shannon currently manages media relations for Canada’s largest credit union, Vancity, and writes about seaweed.

Presentation/Design

Thomas Ledwell is a strategy consultant and founder of Ledwell Strategies Inc., advising corporations, non-profits and universities on strategic communications, governance, innovation and digital transformation. He spent more than a decade in journalism as a reporter, producer and editor for the CBC, the BBC and the Montreal Gazette. A committed volunteer, he co-created the +Fort app for youth experiencing bullying, is an advocate for literacy and sits the board of Montreal-based Fraser Hickson Institute, and serves on juries and selection committees for journalism and community grants.

Louis M. Maraj, PhD, is an award-winning scholar, multimedia artist and author of Black or Right: Anti/Racist Campus Rhetorics. His critical and creative work focuses on questions surrounding anti/racism, anti/blackness and expressive form. Currently, he is an associate professor in University of British Columbia’s School of Journalism, Writing and Media.

Angela Misri is a novelist and journalist who worked at the CBC for 14 years before becoming the digital director at The Walrus. These days, she’s teaching journalism at Toronto Metropolitan University, and her research focuses on using AI to create journalism content.

John Honderich Award for Project of the Year

Jack Aubry worked as a reporter at the Ottawa Citizen for more than a quarter-century, mostly as a national writer on Parliament Hill, after serving as the Outaouais bureau chief and covering Ottawa city hall. He won a National Newspaper Award for Investigations in 1990. He recently retired as director of consultations and media relations for Finance Canada.

Heidi Legg is an American-Canadian journalist, a Concordia graduate journalism alumna, and a research fellow at Harvard’s Institute for Quantitative Social Science on the Future of Media. She has written extensively about the media landscape, including The Fight Against Disinformation in America and Preserving America’s Thought Leader Magazines. Legg has written for the Boston Globe, Ottawa Citizen, The Globe and Mail, CNN, The Atlantic, USA Today and the Press Gazette.

Judy Trinh is a correspondent for CTV National News, based in Ottawa. She specializes in politics and investigations, with a commitment to covering stories focusing on marginalized communities. Trinh previously worked as an investigative journalist at CBC. She has reported live from disaster zones, investigated terror suspects, and shone a light on sexual assault within the music industry. Trinh was honoured with the Student Press Freedom Award from Canadian Journalists for Free Expression, and has been recognized by the Canadian Screen Awards and National Magazine Awards with multiple nominations. Originally from Vietnam, Trinh was four years old when her family fled the country to escape persecution. Her harrowing story inspired one of Historica Canada’s Heritage Minutes. 

Bob Levin Award for Short Feature

Sean Henry is the host of Daybreak, CBC Montreal’s weekday morning radio show. Prior to taking over as host in January 2021, he anchored late evening and weekend television newscasts. This is Sean’s first time as a judge for the National Newspaper Awards.

Jude Isabella is the executive editor of bioGraphic. A science journalist for more than 30 years, she concentrates on the environment, ecology, and archaeology in her own writing. Isabella is the founding editor of Hakai Magazine, an online publication focused on coastal science and societies that she also steered as editor-in-chief for 10 years. 

Alison Uncles is vice-president of the Public Policy Forum, an independent, non-partisan think tank. Most recently, she was editor-in-chief of Maclean’s magazine, and has worked in senior roles at the Ottawa Citizen, the Toronto Star and the National Post, which she helped launch. Uncles has been involved on both sides of this award program — she is a former member of the NNA Board of Governors and has also contributed to many NNA-winning teams and entries as an editor. She is the recipient of the National Magazine Awards’ Editor Grand Prix prize.

Sports

Sabrina Fabian started her career as a reporter for the Banff Crag & Canyon almost 20 years ago, in Banff, Alberta. Since then, she has worked in both English and French at CBC/Radio-Canada as a network reporter, a radio host and field producer at the 2024 Paris Olympic Games. Today she’s a producer at CBC Kids News, Canada’s only national news service for tweens, a website she was instrumental in bringing to life. She’s based in Halifax.

Megan Stewart is an executive producer for CBC News Vancouver and previously worked as a section editor at a newspaper where she spearheaded a series of documentaries over several months that were nominated for a national award. She won a national online journalism award and was recognized by her peers for her work as a sports writer. She has covered six Olympic Games.

Bill Walker worked for the Toronto Star for 25 years as a former reporter and bureau chief. He now works in global corporate communications and as a specialist in crisis communications.

Sports Photo

David Lee worked in magazines for 17 years, first as a researcher for Canadian Business and then for Hello! Canada, where he was assistant and associate photo editor. Now employed at the University of Toronto as a photo and video editor, he believes the thread that ties the different facets of his career together is his love of photography and visual media.

At 18, Peter Martin became a staff photographer at the Oakville Journal Record. He went on to the Edmonton Sun and Montreal Gazette, accumulating more than 10,000 assignments over 40 years. He’s worked in more than 30 countries, covering events from Formula One racing to the fall of the Berlin Wall. In 2008, his NNA-winning photograph of Terry Fox was voted No. 4 in the Top Ten Historical Photos That Changed Canada. He has his own gallery in England.

Jenelle Schneider is a former photojournalist who worked for the Calgary Herald and the Vancouver Sun. After 15 years in journalism, and realizing her goal of covering the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, she left journalism behind to pursue a life of adventure. She now runs a B&B on the Pacific coast of Nicaragua with her husband.

Sustained News Coverage

Catherine McKercher, professor emerita at the Carleton University School of Journalism and Communication, is a former newspaper and wire service journalist. She is the author, co-author or co-editor of several books, including a history of newspaper unions and a reporting textbook. Her latest book, 2019’s Shut Away: When Down Syndrome was a Life Sentence, examines the rise and fall of institutions for people with intellectual disabilities, as told through the life of her brother Bill.

Deo Nizonkiza is a full-time lecturer at the University of British Columbia’s Sauder School of Business, where he teaches communication courses. Previously, he taught at the same university as a sessional lecturer in the School of Journalism, Writing and Media and Vantage College. He has also taught writing courses and English for academic purposes at other institutions here in Canada — Douglas College and McGill University — and abroad — University of Burundi. Deo holds a PhD in applied linguistics from the University of Antwerp, Belgium. 

Lynne Robson grew up determined to NOT be a reporter … because her teachers, her friends and her mother all said that’s what she should do. As a result, she worked in advertising/marketing and communications (including three years as a press officer in the PMO under Pierre Trudeau). Eventually, though, she gave in and joined CBC in Montreal, where she discovered her teachers, friends and mother had been right. Twenty-five years later, she retired as a national reporter with a deep love for journalism and a couple of nice awards.

Special Topic: Journalism in a Language other than French or English

Chuck Chiang is a journalist with The Canadian Press based in Vancouver. Prior to joining CP, Chuck wrote extensively on topics such as minority communities in B.C. for a number of publications, including Business in Vancouver and the Vancouver Sun. He was also involved in the Sun’s Chinese-language news website in the 2010s and has reporting experience in Alberta, the United States and Hong Kong, with organizations that include the Calgary Herald, The Associated Press and USA Today. 

Trevor Wright works for the Government of Nunavut and previously worked in journalism for more than seven years with APTN National News, Nunavut News and the Opasquia Times in The Pas, Manitoba. Reporting on issues impacting Inuit and First Nations, including coverage of the Nunavut Devolution Agreement, compensation for Cree trappers and fishers, the Covid-19 pandemic in Nunavut and Pope Francis’ apology to Inuit, Wright has considerable experience travelling throughout the territory.

Daisy Xiong is a journalist based in Vancouver, specializing in business and cross-cultural reporting. She is currently a staff reporter at Business in Vancouver, and her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Globe and Mail, CBC, Global TV, Vice Media, Richmond News, and the Chinese-language newspaper Sing Tao. She was a bronze recipient of the Ma Murray Community Newspaper Awards and a Joan Donaldson CBC News Scholar.

Special Recognition Citation

Colette Brin is a professor at Université Laval in Quebec City and director of the Centre d’études sur les médias. Her research and teaching focus on recent and ongoing changes in journalism, through policy and organizational initiatives, as well as citizens’ news practices. She coordinates the Canadian study for the Digital News Report (with the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism) and recently co-edited a collection of essays on artificial intelligence, culture and media (Presses de l’Université Laval, 2024). She is chairperson of the Canada Revenue Agency’s Independent Advisory Board on Eligibility for Journalism Tax Measures. Brin also co-chairs the arts, media and culture axis of the Observatoire international sur les impacts sociétaux de l’intelligence artificielle et du numérique (OBVIA), a responsible AI research network based in Quebec.

Sean Holman is the Wayne Crookes professor in environmental and climate journalism and founding director of the Climate Disaster Project, an award-winning teaching newsroom that works with climate-impacted communities to document and investigate their stories using trauma-informed techniques. He is a previous winner of a Special Recognition Citation.

Jimmy Jeong is a Korean-Canadian photojournalist based in Vancouver. Select recognition includes American Photographic Artists, Communication Arts, Online Journalism Awards and Prix de la Photographie Paris. Jimmy is a founding member of Rogue Collective and a member of DiversifyPhoto. He is also a founding mentor with Room Up Front, a mentorship for aspiring BIPOC photojournalists in Canada. He is a previous winner of a Special Recognition Citation.

Journalist of the Year

Magdaline Boutros has been a journalist for some 20 years. Since 2018, she has been covering societal issues for Le Devoir. In 2021, she was named Journalist of the Year by the National Newspaper Awards, along with her colleague Améli Pineda. Over the years, her career has taken her on assignment to Ukraine, Pakistan, Lebanon, Kazakhstan, Argentina, Mexico and the United States. In 2024, she published Lettres d’Ukraine – récits intimes d’un pays en guerre with Éditions Somme toute – Le Devoir. 

Jason A. Chiu is a visual editor at The New York Times, working on the Headway team leading visual storytelling. He was at The Globe and Mail for a decade as deputy head of visuals and led some of the Globe’s most ambitious editorial and product endeavours. His work has been recognized in design competitions worldwide. Chiu is a four-time finalist and three-time winner of a National Newspaper Award.

Jaren Kerr edits and writes news stories for the Financial Times in New York. His work is focused on U.S. financial markets, but he writes about Canada’s economy at every opportunity. He worked at The Globe and Mail, Yahoo Finance, Canadaland and the Toronto Star before moving stateside in 2022. He won a National Newspaper Award with a team in the Politics category in 2020, and was a finalist with a team in the Business category in 2021.