The Globe and Mail has received the most nominations of any foreign news service for the 2015 Online News Association Awards.
The Globe is up for three awards: For its coverage of the October, 2014, shooting on Parliament Hill (in the category of Breaking News – Large); for Saving Cyla, a multimedia feature about an operation on a 19-year-old woman to remove a tumour (Explanatory Reporting – Large); and for Kim’s Choice, about a woman with Huntington’s disease who chooses to starve herself to death before the illness makes her too weak to decide her own fate.
The nominations were announced on Tuesday morning in Washington, D.C.
Other Canadian nominees are The Canadian Press, for its coverage of the Ottawa shooting; Alfred Hermida at the University of British Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism, for an essay about the irrational online spread of fear over Ebola; and a data journalism project by students at Oakville’s Sheridan College that explored how race, gender, income and mental health can affect the lives of millennials.
Other foreign news services up for 2015 ONAs are BBC World Service, El Mundo, Berliner Morgenpost, Norway’s Verdens Gang, The Guardian (with the data journalism studio Kiln), and the Argentine dailies La Nación and Redacción de Clarín.
“This year, judges were swayed less by bells and whistles that didn’t add to the content, and instead zeroed in on high-quality journalism that was able to take flight on digital platforms,” Joshua Hatch, an ONA board member and chair of the Online Journalism Awards Committee, said in a statement. “It goes to show what a democratic force technology has become to journalists around the world.”
The ONA will also present a new award, the James Foley Award for Conflict Reporting, named after a reporter who was killed in Syria last year by Islamic State.
The ONA said it received 994 submissions, and announced nominations in 33 categories.
The New York Times received 10 nominations. The Center for Public Integrity, a non-profit organization dedicated to investigative journalism, is up for seven awards. The Washington Post and The Texas Tribune received four nominations each. The Boston Globe and ProPublica each received three.
Ten of the awards, in categories honouring data journalism, visual digital storytelling, investigative journalism, public service, technical innovation and general excellence, will include a total of $60,000 in prize money.
The ONAs will be presented on Sept. 26 in Los Angeles.
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