Nunavut Quest coverage earns national award nomination for Nunatsiaq News

Nunatsiaq News has been nominated for a National Newspaper Award for its coverage of the 2024 Nunavut Quest dogsled race.

Coverage was compiled in a 20-page special edition, published July 5, 2024, and distributed with the weekly print edition. It offered readers day-by-day reports from the race in both English and Inuktitut, highlighted by numerous photos from the race.

What set it apart from typical news coverage was that all the stories and photos were produced by a team of six high school-aged people from Igloolik — Cadence Arnatsiaq, Kenneth-Owen Angilirq, Leonard Siusangark, Bernice Satuqsi, Dylan Kayotak and Riley Qamukaq.

In a project organized by Shanshan Tian, an educational consultant in Igloolik, the young correspondents’ work was sent each day from the race course to Nunatsiaq News.

The stories and photos were edited and published online throughout the six days of racing from Arctic Bay to Pond Inlet, which stretched from April 16 to 24, including one day of rest for the 10 mushers and their teams and another day lost due to poor weather.

Mushers and their dogsled teams race between Arctic Bay and Pond Inlet during the 2024 Nunavut Quest. (Photo by Dylan Kayotak, special to Nunatsiaq News)

Later, their work was translated to Inuktitut and published in the special section alongside English versions.

The nomination is in the category titled Special Topic: Journalism in a Language other than French or English.

Shanshan Tian, production co-ordinator Krista Klassen, production artist Andrea Gray, managing editor Corey Larocque and web editor Gord Howard are nominated for the work.

“We were truly grateful for the opportunity to collaborate with the Igloolik youths on such an exciting project,” said Julia Roberts, publisher of Nunatsiaq News.

“It was a fantastic experience that allowed them to hone their journalism and photography skills while providing unmatched coverage of the 370-kilometre Nunavut Quest — a win-win situation for everyone involved.”

Also nominated in that category are two entries from Sing Tao, a Toronto-based Chinese newspaper — one for its investigation into the sale of fraudulent mooncakes at Asian food markets in Toronto, another for its reporting on problems encountered by immigration applicants from Hong Kong.

Nunatsiaq News and Sing Tao were also both nominated in that same category in 2024.

National Newspaper Awards organizers announced Tuesday that 83 individual journalists representing 22 publications are finalists this year, alongside nine team submissions from those publications.

The Globe and Mail received the most nominations, with 16, followed by the Toronto Star with 15 and La Presse in Montreal with 13.

Among the nominations:

• Tavia Grant of the Globe and Mail for her reporting on the Vatican’s unfulfilled promises to return cultural items to Indigenous communities in Canada;
• Tanya Talaga of the Globe and Mail for columns on residential school survivors, residential school denialism and the legacy of Murray Sinclair;
• Richie Assaly of the Toronto Star, for his stories on Canadian musicians, including Nunavik’s Elisapie, and their cultural significance.

National Newspaper Awards winners will be announced at a ceremony in Montreal on April 25.