Beat Reporting (under 25,000 circulation)

 

Winner: Mary Katherine Keown, Sudbury Star

In this ambitious entry, Keown puts a local spotlight on the province-wide scourge of human trafficking. She staked out a local hotel, spoke with survivors, their families, academics and police to provide readers with layers of tragic, evocative detail on a problem that often goes on right under our noses, in places we drive past every day.

 

Runner-up: Terry Bridge, Sarnia Observer

With an ear for great quotes, Bridge takes the routine traffic fatal assignment and elevates it in this series of articles, reaching out to the people and personalities to get interesting back stories on the victims and their impacts on the community. Bridge also points to festering road safety issues at crash sites as a timely reminder of how easily a life can be taken. Given the pandemic, the story on a drive-by memorial for a collision victim provides a bittersweet irony.

 

Runner-up: Greg Colgan, Woodstock Sentinel-Review

Colgan uses crisp, clear writing to guide readers through the politics and practicalities, pros and cons of a proposed landfill site in an old limestone quarry in rural Oxford County now that the province has given municipalities the power to approve or deny new garbage dumps.

 

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