Excellence in Rural Reporting
Rural Secretariat Award for Excellence in Rural Reporting
Sponsored by the Rural Secretariat
Class 2021 - circ. open

Judge's Comments

This country's huge landscape remains overwhelmingly non-urban. Despite a thinning population outside our towns and cities, most of us understand the relevance of rural roots to the economic, cultural and even spiritual evolution of our present-day nation. This year, the 60 submissions in this category were an absorbing reminder of how much we still collectively derive from our contact with sea, soil, and even the snows of the Arctic.

Almost all entries reflected this up-close atmospheric understanding of a rural population, who just a few generations in our past, were the only kind of people who lived in what then was becoming modern Canada. Nowadays, adeptly told by community newspaper journalists, rural reporting creates a collage of the country which all of us currently known as "home".

In the first place, the Moosomin (SK) World-Spectator portrayed the emerging rural conundrum of great economic change and challenge, with three front-page stories on the divisive question of whether huge "intensive livestock operations" (ILOs) should be granted any place alongside the methods and lifestyles of traditional agriculture. The coverage included commentary, protest demonstrations, resignations by a majority of municipality politicians, then re-elections - to illustrate a classic, complicated and deeply-felt conflict. Photos, prominent display and clear, multi-sourced quotations told the story and maintained a necessary balance.

Second place winner was the St. Anthony (NF) Northern Pen, for a full-page text-and-photo layout of exemplary quality. It told how a once-thriving fishing community was, sadly, reduced by financial hardship to little more than a town "just trying to hang on".

Third place award goes to Sioux Lookout (ON) Waterway News for its three-part series about a community utilizing native traditions for a self-help program to defeat alcoholism and violence. Five pages of text and color photographs were provided.