Nunatsiaq News nominated for 18 community newspaper awards

Nunatsiaq News has been nominated for 18 Quebec Community Newspapers Association awards, led by its investigations last year into the work environment in Nunavut’s health centres, the territory’s housing crisis and a high-profile case of false claims of Inuit status.

Nominations in the newspaper association’s annual awards were announced last week. The awards recognize the strong journalism produced by more than 30 community newspapers across Quebec, including Nunavik.

Nunatsiaq News is shortlisted in 16 categories, with 11 staff members named as nominees.

“The QCNA awards are the icing on the cake for Nunatsiaq News,” said managing editor Corey Larocque. “We celebrated the paper’s 50^th anniversary in 2023 and these results extended the celebration.”

Reporter Madalyn Howitt collected the most nominations, being singled out in five categories.

She was shortlisted for Best Feature Page for her story and photos on the young welders at the Red Fish Art Studio in Cambridge Bay. She is also nominated for Best Sports Page and Best Feature Series for her coverage of the 2023 Arctic Winter Games.

Howitt is also on the shortlist in two photography categories: Best Nature/Environmental Photo for her picture of the northern lights over Igloolik and Best Feature Photo showing the welders at the Red Fish studio.

Nunatsiaq News reporter Madalyn Howitt is nominated for a Quebec Community Newspapers Association award for her photo showing the northern lights over the bay in Igloolik, taken Sept. 7, 2023. (Photo by Madalyn Howitt)

Reporter Jorge Antunes was also nominated in the Best Feature Photo category for his depiction of fishermen out on the Sylvia Grinnell River.

Two of the three nominees in the Best Investigative Reporting category are from Nunatsiaq News.

Web editor Randi Beers is nominated for her three-part series on the “scary” conditions — such as harassment, abuse and blacklisting — nurses working in Nunavut say they regularly face. Reporter Jeff Pelletier is nominated for the stories he wrote on false claims to Inuit heritage that Karima Manji made on behalf of her daughters Amira and Nadya Gill.

Pelletier is also nominated in the Best Community Health Reporting category for his story on the Government of Nunavut’s hopes that a more than two-month screening clinic might end the two-year-old tuberculosis outbreak in Pangnirtung.

“Our two nominations in the investigative reporting category highlight the hard work done by Jeff Pelletier, who led last year’s coverage of the fraudulent Inuit registrations, and Randi Beers, who patiently got employees to begin publicly talking about the harassment within the Government of Nunavut,” Larocque said.

Reporter David Venn, who left Nunatsiaq News last year, is on the shortlist in both the Best Feature Series and Best Special Edition categories for his four-part Our Home series, a four-part examination of Nunavut’s housing crisis and how it might be alleviated by reviving a plan that was effective in the 1980s in the Northwest Territories.

Reporter Cedric Gallant, who covers Nunavik, was nominated in two categories: Best Feature Story, for an article about a Nazi weather station erected in northern Labrador during the Second World War. and Best Business Story for his piece on Jeffrey Gordon making good on his dream of opening a gym in Kuujjuaq.

Nunatsiaq News production co-ordinator Krista Klassen is nominated for a Quebec Community Newspapers Association Award in the Best Advertisement category for this ad, which ran in our 50th anniversary special edition Sept. 22, 2023.

Reporter David Lochead is nominated in the Best Municipal/Civic Affairs Story category for his story on the strike by workers at the Iqaluit Housing Authority based on the authority’s internal emails that were obtained by Nunatsiaq News.

Nunatsiaq News publisher Michael Roberts is nominated in the Best Business Column or Feature category for his two-part story titled The Long Journey to Publish Nunatsiaq News, a look back at the early days of this newspaper and his family’s life and work in Nunavut.

For Nunatsiaq News, managing editor Corey Larocque and web editors Randi Beers and Gord Howard are nominated in the Best Website category.

Krista Klassen, production co-ordinator for Nunatsiaq News, is nominated for her design in the Best Advertisement category. Nunatsiaq News is also a finalist in the Best Community Newspaper Promotion category for the Sept. 22, 2023, special edition celebrating the newspaper’s 50th anniversary.

Anthony Qrunnut, a Grade 9 student in Igloolik and a member of the journalism club at Sivuniit Middle School, earned a nomination in the Best Contributed Photo category for a picture he took of elders sharing country food with students at the school.

Winners will be announced at a ceremony planned by the Quebec Community Newspapers Association Awards later this year in Montreal.