Winners
Jeff Sanford Best Young Journalist Award
Our third annual Jeff Sanford Best Young Journalist Award goes to Shelly Hagan of Bloomberg News. Shelly graduated from the University of Missouri in 2017 and joined Bloomberg as a Canadian economy reporter in September 2019, a little more than six months before the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Since then, she has been responsible for all major aspects of Bloomberg’s economic coverage, including the Bank of Canada and the labour market.
As Derek DeCloet, Bloomberg’s managing editor for Canada, said in his nomination letter: “Shelly rose to the occasion, working hard to understand and then explain to readers the significance of the emergency measures being implemented by policy makers and to report the incredible disruption to working people in Canada. She has taken a particular leadership role in Bloomberg’s coverage of the Canadian immigration story and was one of the first to quantify the pandemic’s impact on permanent immigration to Canada—a key growth driver of the country’s economy. She finds stories in data that other journalists overlook and digs for exclusive numbers that help tell stories of what’s happening in the economy in real time.”
(The Best Young Journalist Award is named after Financial Post and Canadian Business journalist Jeff Sanford, a graduate of the Ryerson School of Journalism who died in 2018. The award is generously supported by Jeff’s family.)
Outstanding Achievement Award
The winner of our third annual Outstanding Achievement Award is Michael Babad. Mike spent two decades as a senior business editor at The Globe and Mail, where he was universally beloved—a near-miraculous accomplishment in the journalism game. His writing displayed that rare combination of deep business knowledge and sly humour, and his Business Briefing consistently ranked among The Globe’s most-read articles. He was early to embrace online journalism and recognize the value of reader data. Perhaps most important, he was a mentor and champion to generations of reporters, supporting them with kindness and patience.
In addition to his long career at The Globe, Mike was business editor at The Toronto Star, a senior manager at The Financial Post, and headed United Press International in Toronto before the wire service closed. Along with his wife, Catherine Mulroney, he also co-wrote three business books: Campeau: The Building of an Empire; Pillars: The Coming Crisis in Canada’s Financial Industry; and Where the Buck Stops: The Dollar, Democracy and the Bank of Canada. He did most of his book-writing in the early mornings before work rather than taking significant time off.
Mike died of cancer in March 2020, just days after filing his last Business Briefing column. He was celebrated at a packed memorial service just before the world went into lockdown, where Catherine joked there were “three of us in this marriage”—referring to Mike’s devotion to The Globe.
As his long-time friend Eric Reguly wrote after Mike’s death: “To me, Mike was the heart and soul of The Globe, a gentle force of nature who combined humour, good nature, a strong work ethic and a killer news sense to make The Globe a fine paper and put a smile on the face of everyone who worked with him.”
Finalists
Audio or Visual Storytelling
- Gold: Rob Carrick, Roma Luciw, Kiran Rana, Hannah Sung, Amanda Cupido and TK Matunda (The Globe and Mail), “Stress Test”
- Silver: Gabriel Friedman (Financial Post), “Down to Business: ‘No science’ behind
lobster dispute” - Honorable Mention: Kyle Bakx (CBC News), “Portrait of retail survival: Inside a strip mall during
COVID-19”
Beat reporting
- Gold: Theo Argitis (Bloomberg), Canadian finance
- Silver: Josh O’Kane (The Globe and Mail), small business
- Honorable Mention: Aleksandra Sagan (The Logic), retail
Breaking news
- Gold: Wendy Stueck, Brent Jang, Les Perreaux, Eric Andrew-Gee, Eric Atkins, Evan Annett, John Sopinski and Jimmy Jeong (The Globe and Mail), “Coastal Gaslink protests and rail blockades”
- Silver: Rosa Saba (Toronto Star), “CERB confusion”
- Honorable Mention: Jake Edmiston, Joe O’Connor, Kevin Carmichael and Terence Corcoran (Financial Post), “Michael McCain’s anti-Trump tweets”
Commentary
- Gold: Eric Reguly (The Globe and Mail)
- Silver: Rita Trichur (The Globe and Mail)
- Honorable Mention: David Skok (The Logic)
Editorial newsletter
- Gold: Daily Briefing (The Logic), The Logic staff
- Silver: Posthaste (Financial Post)m Yadullah Hussain and Pamela Heaven
- Honorable Mention: Cannabis Canada Weekly (BNN Bloomberg), David George-Cosh and Shane McNeil
Feature (long)
- Gold: Joe Castaldo (The Globe and Mail), “Despite a pandemic, mega-mall pioneers bet on American Dream”
- Silver: Eric Reguly (The Globe and Mail), “Next stop, Ottawa: Mark Carney comes home”
- Honorable Mention: Natalie Obiko Pearson (Bloomberg), “How Huawei won 5G”
Feature (short)
- Gold: David Milstead and Bill Curry (The Globe and Mail), “CPPIB’s fracking operation in U.S. raises questions”
- Silver: Anita Balakrishnan (Canadian Press), “The Year in Labour”
- Honorable Mention: Rachelle Younglai, Frances Bula and Michael Awad (The Globe and Mail), “Will the pandemic reshape landmark high streets?”
Investigative
- Gold: Tavia Grant, Kathryn Blaze Baum and Carrie Tait (The Globe and Mail), “Canada’s vulnerable food sector workers”
- Silver: Natalie Obiko Pearson, Danielle Bochove and David Herbling (Bloomberg Businessweek), “How a Charity Superstar Innovated Its Way to Political Scandal”
- Honorable Mention: James McLeod (Financial Post), “Double-double tracking: How Tim Hortons knows where you sleep, work and vacation”
Package
- Gold: Kait Bolongaro, Shelly Hagan and Sandrine Rastello (Bloomberg), “Canada immigration upheaval”
- Silver: Tara Deschamps (Canadian Press), diversity series
- Honorable Mention: Nathan Caddell, Alyssa Hirose, Michael McCullough, Matt O’Grady and Nick Rockel (BCBusiness Magazine), “Making It Work”
Personal finance and investing
- Gold: Victor Ferreira (Financial Post), “Money to be made: Meet the new retail investors flooding the market amid the pandemic”
- Silver: Rob Carrick (The Globe and Mail), pandemic personal finance updates
- Honorable Mention: Divya Balji, Jacqueline Thorpe, Susanne Barton, Michael Bellusci and Eddit van der Walt (Bloomberg), “COVID market crash”
Profile
- Gold: Alanna Mitchell (Report on Business magazine), “Women Lead Here: Eira Thomas”
- Silver: David Parkinson (The Globe and Mail), “Crush it: Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem says a crisis is no time for half measures”
- Honorable Mention: Brent Jang (The Globe and Mail), “Chasing the hydrogen dream: Ballard on quest to transform long-haul transportation”
Scoop
- Gold: Andrew Willis and Jeffrey Jones (The Globe and Mail), “Aimco’s errors”
- Silver: Murad Hemmadi (The Logic), “Palantir and the pandemic”
- Honorable Mention: David George-Cosh (BNN Bloomberg), “Aphria, Tilray said to be in advanced merger talks”
Trade article
- Gold: Garry Marr (CoStar News), “Canadians shuffle off to Buffalo looking for better property returns”
- Silver: Daniel Fish (Precedent Magazine), “In recovery”
- Honorable Mention: Helen Burnett-Nichols (Globe Advisor), “New advisors find ways to make a go of it during the pandemic”
