Best Sports Pages
Sponsored by Tembec Paper Group
Class 3071 - circ. up to 3999

Judge's Comments

The Taber (AB) Times reign at the top among small weeklies from across Canada has been broken by the Gananoque (ON) Reporter, an established paper in eastern Ontario not known for its sport coverage in the past. Sports editor Rosanne Van Vierzen is to be commended for her efforts bringing an array of stories and photos covering more than just hockey in her December submission. While the Times still dominates in scope and content, the Reporter made up for weaknesses in running too many static team photos, with an excellent statistics page and variety, allowing Van Vierzen to garner Gananoque's first CCNA for best sports pages by edging Garrett Simmons from Alberta's corn country 38-37. A lack of sports statistics cost Taber as well as the third-place Fort Macleod Gazette. The top-three newspapers used a broad sheet format effectively, a distinct advantage over the tabloid entries. Larger photos and headlines, plus the layout possibilities, provided the edge in giving the readers much more bang for their buck. And Van Vierzen used her space to provide Gananoque's sports community with plenty to read, enhancing the words with great action shots. She would have easily scored in the mid-40s if she'd went with curling and volleyball action shots, rather than posed team photos. But it was nice to see her use an imagination in dressing up figure skating photos when she didn't have action shots to work with on production day. Taber is still the bench mark for smaller community newspapers to follow if they want to challenge for the top. Unlike most papers, Taber allocates space to a wide range of sports, with excellent action photos.