Finalists Announced for The Canadian Journalism Foundation (CJF) Jackman Excellence Award

 The Canadian Journalism Foundation (CJF) is proud to announce its shortlists for the CJF Jackman Awards for Excellence in Journalism, honouring news organizations that embody exemplary journalism and have a profound positive impact on the communities they serve. Finalists are recognized in two categories: large and small media.

Through this prestigious award, the CJF has since 1996 recognized news organizations that embrace ideals of journalistic excellence – originality, courage, independence, accuracy, social responsibility, accountability and diversity.

“The second year of the pandemic didn’t stop Canadian news organizations, both large and small, from doing excellent work on a wide range of national and international issues,” says jury chair Christopher Waddell, professor emeritus at Carleton University’s School of Journalism and Communication. “The compelling stories chosen as finalists covered subjects from across the country and beyond—social policy, policing, prisons, Indigenous affairs, environmental concerns and Canada’s obligations to Afghans fleeing their country. Cumulatively, they highlight some of the major issues that captured attention last year as Canadians took the first steps towards a post-pandemic world.”

The five finalists in the large media category (more than 50 full-time employees) and the stories and/or series shortlisted for the award are:

• “Clean Water, Broken Promises” Consortium, for “Clean Water, Broken Promises,” a collaborative investigation into water issues in First Nations involving 75 student journalists and more than 125 students, instructors, journalists, editors and producers;
• Global News, for its investigation into widespread sexual misconduct and abuse of power in the most senior ranks of the Canadian military, resulting in what experts have since called a “crisis” of sexual misconduct;
• Le Devoir, for its investigative series into the deaths of citizens during police interventions over a 20-year period in Quebec;
• The Globe and Mail, for “Escape from Afghanistan,” a story documenting journalist Mark MacKinnon’s courageous work on the efforts to evacuate Afghan nationals following the fall of Afghanistan;
• Winnipeg Free Press, for “Life and Death Behind Bars,” an eight-part investigative series into prison conditions at the Stony Mountain Institution, Manitoba’s only federal penitentiary.
   

The five finalists in the small media category (fewer than 50 full-time employees) and the stories and/or series shortlisted for the award are:

• IndigiNews, for exposing that government lawyers had told the B.C. government that the controversial practice of birth alerts was “illegal and unconstitutional” months before it stopped the program;
• Rocky Mountain Outlook, for “Buried in the Aftermath,” a four-part series on how the Association of Canadian Mountain Guides handles avalanche fatalities on guided trips in the Canadian Rockies;
• Saskatoon StarPhoenix, for “Trapped,” a seven-part series that reveals how government systems are woefully unprepared to help people struggling with substance use;
• The Narwhal, for Amber Bracken’s first-person photo essay that connected her arrest while covering an Indigenous anti-pipeline protest with broader police violations of journalists’ rights;
• The Tyee, for its investigation into the Alberta government’s covert efforts to undo decades-old regulations to open up the Rockies’ sensitive eastern slopes to open-pit coal mining.
   

All finalists' story submissions are available on our awards page.

The winners in both categories will be announced at the CJF Awards ceremony on June 7 at the Art Gallery of Ontario. For tickets, tables and sponsorship opportunities, see contact information below or visit the CJF Awards page.

The CJF Jackman Award jury members are:

• Christopher Waddell (chair), professor emeritus, School of Journalism and Communication, Carleton University;
• Catherine Cano, president of CanoVision and former executive with CPAC and Radio-Canada;
• Isabel Bassett, former minister of Citizenship, Culture and Recreation and former chair and CEO of TVO;
• Sonya Fatah, assistant professor, School of Journalism, Ryerson University;
• Peter Herrndorf, former president and CEO, National Arts Centre and former senior executive at CBC and TVO; and
• Wendy Metcalfe, vice-president of content and editor-in-chief, Hearst Connecticut Media Group.