National Newspaper Awards announce 2020 winners, year dominated by pandemic coverage

The Globe and Mail, The Canadian Press and La Presse were the big winners as the 2020 National Newspaper Awards were handed out virtually on Friday night.

The Globe took home 10 awards, including top honours in the sustained news coverage category for its work covering the spread of COVID-19 in Canada’s long-term care homes.

The Canadian Press won three awards, including top spot in the breaking news category for its coverage of the killing rampage that left 22 people dead in Nova Scotia last spring.

La Presse also landed three awards, including the beat reporting and explanatory work categories.

Le Devoir and the Toronto Star won two awards apiece. One of the Star’s wins, editorial cartooning, was shared with the Halifax Chronicle Herald.

The Saskatoon StarPhoenix and the Kenora Miner and News had one award each.

The Globe and Mail’s Tom Cardoso was named journalist of the year for an investigation that exposed systemic bias against Indigenous, Black and female prisoners in Canada’s corrections system.

Not surprisingly, coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic dominated the awards this year.

Of the 66 finalists, nearly half were nominated for work that related in some way to the pandemic and 10 of the 22 winning entries involved COVID-19 coverage.

Geoffrey York of the Globe and Mail won the fifth National Newspaper Award of his career. He was one of five Globe and Mail journalists on a team recognized in the politics category. Another member of that team, Paul Waldie, won his fourth NNA.

Erin Anderssen of the Globe and Andrew Vaughan of The Canadian Press also won for the fourth time in their careers. Anderssen won the award for short feature, and Vaughan won the award in the breaking news photo category.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 7, 2021.

The Canadian Press