The team at The Discourse is celebrating six wins at the Canadian Online Publishing Awards, more than any other publisher. We’re so happy that our small team’s commitment to community service journalism is being recognized in this way.
The Discourse Cowichan took GOLD 🥇 for Best Community News Website. Many people contributed to making our website beautiful, usable and full of valuable community news and information. We’re especially indebted to the team at Indiegraf, which handles the tech side of things and makes it look easy.
Shalu Mehta took GOLD 🥇 for Best Local Community News for “The Highlanders,” an in-depth series on the conflict between a community committed to environmental protection and the gravel quarry industry knocking down its door.
Shalu Mehta also took GOLD 🥇 for Best Feel Good Story. After a rainbow crosswalk representing support for LGBTQ2S+ and BIPOC people was defaced outside Royal Bay Secondary School, many local media outlets focused on the hateful act. Instead, Shalu interviewed Grade 12 student Oskar Wood, one of the organizers of the rainbow crosswalk project, about how the students came together to respond to hate with love.
“I’m so happy to see that story get this recognition,” Shalu says. “Oskar really deserves the credit; he’s a fantastic human.”
That same story won SILVER 🥈 in the BEST OF CANADA award for Best Digital Content. That means that this story got the second highest overall score from the judges out of every article and piece of digital content entered in this year’s awards. Yahoo! 🎉
And Jared Qwustenuxun Williams’s three-part series on Coast Salish food and cooking earned a well-deserved SILVER 🥈 for Best Multicultural Storytelling. (Here’s where you’ll find Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.) The whole Discourse team is so happy to have been able to support bringing this important knowledge and wisdom to light.
Reporter and photographer Philip McLachlan took SILVER 🥈 for Best Photojournalism. Philip’s keen eye captured amazing shots from this demonstration marking one year of blockades at Fairy Creek, and then captured the judges’ admiration.
In addition to these awards, The Discourse was recognized as a finalist for Best Investigative Article, Best Feel Good Story, Best Continuing Coverage of a Story (twice), Best Daily News Coverage and Best Virtual Event. You can read more about all 11 nominations here.
We’d be remiss not to mention our friends at IndigiNews, a sister publication to The Discourse, who took home SILVER 🥈 for Best Investigative Story, for their incredible work uncovering hidden truths behind the B.C. government’s birth alerts system, which for many years contributed to disproportionate separation of Indigenous babies from their parents.
IndigiNews was also a finalist for a separate entry in the Best Investigative Story category, as well as Best Feel Good Story. Congrats, IndigiNews!
The Discourse is supported by our readers and community members, and we couldn’t do it without them. If you’ve read this far, THANK YOU. We share this recognition with you. [end]
