Atlantic Journalism Awards gold honours wildfire coverage
Tina Comeau and Kathy Johnson share award for breaking news coverage of the 2023 wildfires
The Tri-County Vanguard newsroom duo of Tina Comeau and Kathy Johnson have captured a shared Atlantic Journalism Award gold award for their around-theclock reporting of the wildfires in southwestern Nova Scotia in the spring of 2023.
Comeau and Johnson took top honours in Breaking News (print) category for their combined efforts in their Atlantic Journalism Award submission: “Out of Control: The Barrington Lake Wildfire,” which was a compilation of their coverage and work between May and July 2023.
The pair covered the wildfire from every conceivable angle, particularly during the first couple of weeks, when the news was breaking every day as the wildfire – the largest in Nova Scotia history – continued to spread, forcing thousands of people to evacuate their homes, and also led to highway and road closures, the evacuation of long-term care facilities and Roseway hospital, comfort care centres set up to help evacuees, school closures, impacts to the end of the commercial lobster fishery, impacts on businesses, destruction of homes and properties, a relentless firefighting effort, daily news briefings and much more.
Comeau also found solo success with two bronze awards – one in the profile category for “Randy and Mark: The Dynamic Duo” and the other in Sports Reporting and Writing (any medium) for “A Banner Day: 51 Years Later.”
Elswhere among Saltwire staff Halifax cartoonist Bruce MacKinnon was acclaimed as a gold medalist in the Editorial Cartooning category for his body of work.
Aaron Beswick, who writes for the Chronicle Herald and Saltwire. com, and at times for this newspaper, captured a silver award in the Long Feature (over 1500 words) category for his writing in “Dying in Cumberland” – a story about a mother of three who died in hospital after a lengthy wait spanning many hours in the hospital's emergency department, despite pleas from her husband and others in the ER that she needed prompt care. Beswick also won a bronze in Enterprise Reporting for his reporting about the elvers fishery.
SaltWire multimedia journalist Angela Capobianco in New Glasgow was awarded silver in the Student Awards category for her work on the Dalhousie Gazette piece, "The Best People Die" from April 4, 2023.