Two Globe and Mail reporters have received gold medals at the 2024 Atlantic Journalism Awards for their work exploring the chaos left behind by breakdowns in government policy and accountability.
Winners of the annual awards, which recognize work for print, radio, TV and digital news in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland and Labrador, were announced Saturday at a gala in Dartmouth, N.S.
Lindsay Jones won a gold medal for long feature in the print for “A Hospital’s Mistake,” published in February. The story follows the lives of Richard Beauvais and Eddy Ambrose, two men who were switched at birth in 1955 at a Manitoba hospital and the continuing struggle for families to find justice after such cases.
Ms. Jones shared a second gold medal with reporter Colin Freeze in the legal affairs reporting and writing (any medium) category for their feature “A Fatal Night Out in Halifax,” published in September.
The story digs into the life and death of Ryan Sawyer, who died on Christmas Eve, 2022, after an alleged altercation with bouncers outside a Halifax bar. Ms. Jones and Mr. Freeze revealed that at the time of Mr. Sawyer’s death, Nova Scotia had no training or licensing regime in place for bouncers and private security – unlike in most provinces – and that laws to create such a regime had been passed but sat languishing “unproclaimed” by the province’s cabinet since 2010.
The CBC won the most AJA medals with 22, including nine golds. Newspapers from the insolvent SaltWire Network Inc. chain – The Guardian, Tri-County Vanguard, The Chronicle Herald, The Telegram and The Telegraph-Journal – racked up five golds and a dozen silver and bronze awards. The Halifax Examiner, an independent news site run by journalist Tim Bousquet, claimed three gold medals and one silver.