Journal wins nine press awards

Ottawa

The Anglican Journal took nine prizes at the annual convention of Canadian Church Press here on May 9, including the top award for treatment of a news event, which recognized the newspaper’s coverage of the residential schools issue by reporter Solange De Santis.

Judges in that category said that Ms. De Santis’ reporting “does an excellent job of presenting the unvarnished truth to its readers.”

MinistryMatters, General Synod’s magazine for people involved in ministry, won two awards, one for the layout of its coverage of General Synod, and one for poetry. The latter award recognized a poem entitled Full Net by Huntsville, Ont., writer Mel Malton, published in the Spring, 2001 edition.

Archbishop Michael Peers, the primate, won two honorable mentions, one for a pastoral letter published on the front page of the Journal after the September 11 terrorist attacks on New York, and one for the monthly column Grace Notes which he has been writing for several years.

Website manager Leanne Larmondin won an honorable mention in the original written humor category for an article describing bureaucratic hoops organizers of a joint Lutheran-Anglican service had to jump through to be able to serve sacramental wine in a public arena at last summer’s General Synod. The judges said “This piece is proof that the way to handle ridiculous bureaucracy is with humor.”

Saskia Rowley, who does layout and design for both the Journal and MinistryMatters, won three awards for her work with the Anglican Journal as well as the one for layout of MinistryMatters.

She was honored for feature layout and design for the special supplement on General Synod, September, 2001, front page layout for the same edition of the newspaper, and layout and design of an entire edition, also for the September, 2001 edition of the Journal which included the General Synod supplement.

The judges complimented Ms Rowley for the “disciplined and thoughtful way” in which she combines disparate elements including typography to present the newspaper in a unified and attractive way.

First prize in the category honoring layout of an entire edition went to The Anglican, the newspaper of the Anglican diocese of Toronto.

Toronto artist Anna Payne-Krzyzanowski won the Journal an award in the original artwork category for an Easter theme painting published on the front page in April, 2001, which was captioned “This story does not end.”

Journal editor Vianney (Sam) Carriere was honored for black and white photography for a panoramic view of the General Synod meeting, published on the front page of the supplement. The photograph showed synod members listening to Archbishop Peers’ presidential address, with him standing at a podium and also shown on a large television screen.

Canadian Church Press is an association of more than 80 Canadian religious publications with a combined circulation of more than 2.4 million readers.

Christian Week, an ecumenical newspaper published in Winnipeg, won CCP’s national general excellence award, with an honorable mention in that category going to The Catholic Register. The United Church Observer won the A. C. Forrest Memorial Award for “socially conscious religion journalism.” The A.C. Forrest award went to writers Donna Sinclair and John Bird for an article on northern forests.

Crosstalk, the newspaper of the Anglican diocese of Ottawa, won an honorable mention for general excellence for a regional newspaper.