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Jill Anzarut undergoing the start of her chemotherapy program at Princess margaret Hospital on March 9 2011. Santhmma Mathew, a registered nurse in the chemotherapy clinic prepares to administer the chemotherapy drug. She's unable to receive the cancer-fighting drug Herceptin because her tumour is too small so this will have to come out of her own pocket but she plans to fight this.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail

A series of Globe and Mail articles about the way the Ontario government pays for cancer-fighting drugs has been recognized with a nomination for one of Canada's most prestigious journalistic honours.

The Globe is one of six finalists named on Friday for the 2011 Michener Award for meritorious public-service journalism.

The articles, which focused on Ontario's failure to pay for the drug Herceptin for treatment of small tumours in patients with a particular kind of breast cancer, eventually forced the provincial government to change its policies.

The Globe coverage, spearheaded by health writer Lisa Priest and Queen's Park reporter Karen Howlett, looked at the case of Jill Anzarut, a Toronto breast-cancer patient who discovered the province would not pay for her Herceptin treatments because her tumour was less than one centimetre in size.

Other finalists for this year's Michener are:

CBC News, for its coverage of sexual-harassment complaints by female RCMP officers.

La Presse, for exposing the poor condition of the Champlain commuter bridge in Montreal.

Victoria's Times Colonist, for its reporting on British Columbia government policies that forced disabled people from group homes.

The Toronto Star, for its investigations into Ornge, Ontario's troubled air-ambulance service.

The Windsor Star, for documenting brutality and coverups within the Windsor Police Service.

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