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SABEW Canada announces the winners of the 6th Annual Best in Business Awards

The Canadian chapter of the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing (SABEW) is excited/relieved/ashamed to very belatedly announce the winners of the 6th Annual Best in Business Awards competition, recognizing outstanding business reporting published way back in 2019. (If there were an award for “Better Late Than Never,” we would win!)

Since we are already, ahem, several months late in announcing the winners (listen, it just never seemed like a good time), here they are, without further ado:

Audio or Visual Storytelling

Gold
Sean Stanleigh, Stephanie Chan, Laura Regehr, Ann Lang and Tara Deschamps (The Globe and Mail), “Industry interrupted”

Silver
Matt Lundy (The Globe and Mail), data visualizations

Honorable Mention
Scott Gill and James McLeod (Financial Post), “Focals by north”

Beat Reporting

Gold
Eric Atkins, The Globe and Mail (transportation)

Silver
Brent Jang, The Globe and Mail (natural gas industry)

Honorable Mention
Catherine McIntyre, The Logic (the gig economy)

Breaking News Coverage

Gold
The Logic (Amanda Roth and Catherine McIntyre), “Sidewalk Labs and Waterfront Toronto reach a deal”

Silver
The Globe and Mail (Josh O’Kane, Alex Bozikovic, Jeff Gray, Rachelle Younglai and Tom Cardoso), Sidewalk Lab negotiations

Honorable Mention
The Globe and Mail (Emma Graney, Jeffrey Jones, Carrie Tait, Kelly Cryderman, Gary Mason, James Bradshaw, Christine Dobby, Andrew Willis, Ian McGugan, David Milstead and David Berman), “Encana to move its headquarters to U.S.”

Commentary

Gold
Rita Trichur (The Globe and Mail)

Silver
David Parkinson (The Globe and Mail)

Honorable Mention
Kevin Carmichael (Financial Post)

Editorial Newsletter

Gold
The Logic (The Logic staff), Daily Briefing

Silver
HuffPost Canada (Daniel Tencer), HuffPost Canada Housing Newsletter

Honorable Mention
Financial Post (Yadullah Hussein and Pam Heaven), Posthaste

Feature (long-form)

Gold
Zander Sherman (Report on Business magazine), “Forged by fire”

Silver
Charles Wilkins (Report on Business magazine), “Castaways” 

Honorable Mention
Alexandra Posadzki, Joe Castaldo, Jessica Leeder and Lindsay Jones (The Globe and Mail), “Crypto chaos”

Feature (short-form)

Gold
Danielle Bochove (Bloomberg News), “In planet’s fastest-warming region, jobs come with thaw”

Silver
Joe O’Connor (Financial Post), “An historic gold mine in a tiny Ontario town…”

Honorable Mention
Sean Silcoff (The Globe and Mail), “Montreal analytics startup uses AI to play a big role in NHL playoffs”

Investigative

Gold
Matthew McClearn, Geoffrey York and Stephanie Nolen (The Globe and Mail), “See No Evil”

Silver
Joe Castaldo, Alexandra Posadzki, Nathan VanderKlippe and Jessica Leeder (The Globe and Mail), “How did Gerald Cotton die?”

Honorable Mention
Gordon Hoekstra and Kim Bolan (Vancouver Sun), money laundering

Package

Gold
Chris Fournier, Erik Hertzberg, Natalie Wong, Kevin Orland and Paula Sambo (Bloomberg News), consumer debt

Silver
Geoffrey Morgan and Vanmala Subramaniam (Financial Post), “Rural Alberta (dis)advantage”

Honorable Mention
Ryan Stuart (BCBusiness Magazine), “The future of work”

Personal Finance and Investing

Gold
Tim Shufelt (The Globe and Mail), “The data game”

Silver
Mark Brown, Sandra E. Martin, Julie Cazzin, Chris Richard and Daisy Barette (MoneySense), “Canada’s best dividend stocks 2020”

Honorable Mention
Victor Ferreira (Financial Post), “The inconvenient truth about responsible investing”

Profile

Gold
Jason Kirby (Report on Business magazine), “Trash talking”

Silver
Kristine Owram and Susan Berfield (Bloomberg News), Bruce Linton

Honorable Mention
Steve Kupferman (Pivot), “Toy Story”

Scoop

Gold
Mark Rendell and Jeffrey Jones (The Globe and Mail), “CannTrust allegedly used fake walls to hide pot…”

Silver

Geoffrey Morgan (Financial Post), “Billionaire Koch brothers dump Canada’s oil sands leases…”

Honorable Mention
Niall McGee and Rachelle Younglai (The Globe and Mail), “Barrick eyes hostile bid…”

Trade Article

Gold
Daniel Fish (Precedent Magazine), “Paying the partners”

Silver
Kelsey Rolfe (Benefits Canada), “Rise of the machines”

Honorable Mention
Leah Golob (Investment executive), “Singles: a growing demographic”

Jeff Sanford Best Young Journalist Award

Our second annual Best Young Journalist Award (named after former Financial Post and Canadian Business journalist Jeff Sanford) goes to Natalie Wong of Bloomberg News. Soon after joining Bloomberg in 2017, Natalie broke news about the Canadian government’s plan to impose steel tariffs on importers, which moved the loonie and shares of some of the biggest steel companies. Last year, she penned a feature about college kids living in Vancouver mansions amid a luxury housing upheaval, which garnered global attention. It was the most-read Bloomberg Canada story of 2019. She also scooped her competitors on some of the biggest real estate stories in Canada last year, including Oxford’s sale of its Fairmont portfolio and the state of talks between Waterfront and Sidewalk Labs.

Natalie’s impact extends beyond real estate: She wrote a profile on the co-inventor of BlackBerry for Bloomberg Businessweek magazine and spent days in a courthouse digging up documents essential for the feature, “The Unsolved Murder of an Unusual Billionaire,” which chronicled the mysterious circumstances behind the deaths of Barry and Honey Sherman and won a 2019 Best in Business Canada Award. She also broke news about NBA player Steph Curry’s investment in a Canadian travel startup, landing an exclusive TV interview with him.

When a commercial property reporter position opened in New York late last year, the U.S. team snatched Natalie up and gave her ownership over one of the biggest real estate markets in the world. She has approached that beat with gusto and has already developed an array of sources that led to scoops about the fallout from WeWork’s botched IPO and the impact of the retail apocalypse on iconic high-streets, among other stories.

Outstanding Achievement Award

The winner of our second annual Outstanding Achievement Award is Marina Strauss, who retired from The Globe and Mail last summer. Marina has been among the most important voices in Canadian retailing over the past two decades, gaining the respect of both her peers and industry executives (who often dreaded her phone calls but took them anyway). She was known for her tenacious probing, critical eye and profound knowledge of the sector, bringing analysis and context to her stories, but with an easy-to-understand style that broadened her appeal beyond the business pages. As a beat reporter, she consistently broke news but also delved deep into big stories, providing definitive coverage on the collapse of Sears Canada, early troubles at Target Canada, the ups and downs of Hudson’s Bay Co., tensions between Tim Hortons franchisees and their new Brazilian owner, and so much more. She won Best in Business Awards in both the U.S. and Canada in 2019 for her story, “Inside the messy transformation of Tim Hortons,” and won best beat reporter at SABEW Canada’s inaugural awards in 2015.

Beyond her writing, Marina was the model citizen in the office, often collaborating on stories and helping mentor other journalists. Internally at The Globe, she led workshops on writing business stories, developing sources and covering bankruptcies. She loved her work, and her enthusiasm rubbed off on her colleagues. Even after retiring, she took time to prepare her successor for the beat and still provides counsel—a mark of her commitment to her craft.

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