The Tyee Nets Five Jack Webster Award Nominations

Every year, Tyee editors sit down together to assemble our submission list for a set of B.C. journalism awards named for the late Vancouver journalist and broadcaster Jack Webster. The process invites us to take time out of our daily routine to reflect on why this work is important to us.

“Public interest journalism, done to high standards, matters and can point the way to positive change. We’re fortunate to have so many reader supporters who agree,” said Tyee editor-in-chief David Beers.

When we received the news this week that The Tyee has been nominated for five 2024 Webster awards, we were eager to celebrate with both the Tyee team and our colleagues in our extended communities who are vital to this work.

“I salute our team and the Climate Disaster Project who’ve been stellar collaborators,” Beers said. “And a second salute to all those committed B.C. journalists who are keeping the flame lit in tough times.”

Our journalism is supported by our Tyee Builders, a wide-ranging community of readers whose membership fuels our work. “We’re thankful for our Tyee Builders whose support makes it possible to focus on in-depth journalism that is impactful and award-worthy,” said Tyee publisher Jeanette Ageson.

We’re thrilled to present the Tyee’s Webster-nominated work below.

Best News Reporting of the Year — Print/Digital
Exclusive: Audit Reveals Major Failures in MCFD Region Where Boy Died
By Katie Hyslop and Jen St. Denis

Katie Hyslop and Jen St. Denis obtained an audit under freedom of information legislation that contained damning information: that social workers regularly failed to visit children placed in foster care in all 14 files where it was required. This took place in a region where an Indigenous child died from injuries sustained by horrific abuse while in the care of the Ministry of Children and Family Development.

The Tyee’s reporting followed years of Hyslop’s sustained, courageous journalism in these realms.

“This is a great example of the work we do at The Tyee: we take the time to look deeply into tragic issues and explore just where and how systemic failures are harming vulnerable people,” said Hyslop and St. Denis.

“We heard from ordinary British Columbians who were deeply shaken by this boy’s unnecessary death in foster care, and we know our reporting resonated strongly with readers as well as politicians who have the power to make change.”

Excellence in Business Reporting
Choked Out: The Wildfire Threat to Tree Planters
By Aldyn Chwelos, Kristen de Jager, Paul Voll

The Tyee partnered with the Climate Disaster Project to produce a special investigation on the regulations for outdoor workers during wildfire season in Canada. They found that those regulations hadn’t done enough to protect workers like tree planters, who were exposed every day to acrid smoke.

“While research on long-term effects of wildfire smoke is in its infancy, early findings are worrying,” wrote the authors.

Excellence in Health Reporting
Exclusive: Telus Handed BC Contract to Provide Eating Disorders Care
By Andrew MacLeod

The Tyee’s legislative bureau chief Andrew MacLeod found that B.C.’s Island Health awarded a contract to Telus to provide services to people with eating disorders, and his exclusive piece of reporting raised vital questions about how we arrived at a moment where a telecommunications company became a service provider for an under-resourced and critical space of health care.

“This was a story about the privatization of eating disorder services, a sensitive topic that hasn’t had enough attention, and I am grateful to the sources who explained it to me and trusted me to tell it,” MacLeod said. “I’m thankful every day to be part of a team at an outlet that provides the space, time and support to find and tell stories that matter in people’s lives.”

Excellence in Environment Reporting
Tragically, BC Ignored Lessons of 2009’s Killer Heat Wave
By Jordan Kovacs and Jimmy Thomson

The Tyee partnered with the Climate Disaster Project to produce an exemplary piece of environmental reporting by Jordan Kovacs and Jimmy Thomson that took readers back to the fatal, sweltering Vancouver day in 2009 when 46-year-old Curtis Brick died in a public park, steps away from passersby, during a historic heat wave.

“That was 12 years before a heat dome scorched much of B.C. with even higher temperatures and grabbed the world’s attention in the summer of 2021,” Kovacs and Thomson wrote.

“That calamity killed 619 people — but experts say many of those deaths might not have happened if the provincial government had acted on long forgotten recommendations developed after the earlier heat wave that claimed Brick and so many others.”

Kovacs and Thomson’s urgent reporting demonstrated how the solutions to some of the most pressing matters of our times are near at hand. And a stunning gap between knowledge, implementation and political will stands to cost people their lives.

Commentator of the Year/City Mic Award
Dorothy Woodend, culture editor

One of the most celebrated and anticipated moments of the Webster Awards is the presentation of what’s known as the City Mic Award, a prize that celebrates a writer whose spirited work helps us make sense of the times we live in. This year, The Tyee’s culture editor Dorothy Woodend is among the finalists.

We couldn’t be more thrilled. Woodend has been part of The Tyee since its earliest years. She contributed her first pieces of Tyee culture writing in 2004, when The Tyee was just a year old.

“It’s been fascinating to watch The Tyee grow and develop alongside the city itself,” Woodend said. “When I first moved to Vancouver with my twin sister, I think we had $200 between us. We did what all young folks who move to the big city do, found a cheap apartment, got crappy jobs and tried to make a home here.”

“The other day I was walking home from work, and I wondered what that 17-year-old version of Dorothy would think of the current (much older!) version. I think she’d think I did okay.

“But to be honest, it took a lot of help from a great many people. I have been lucky. I’ve met so many extraordinary folks in different communities, but the arts have always been home.

“It’s a true privilege to write about dance, music, the visual arts, film and books. Even as the media landscape shifts, The Tyee has always honoured culture, made it a cornerstone of the publication. For this I am unbelievably grateful.”

Our sincere congratulations to all the Webster finalists for 2024. We’re grateful for the continued support of Tyee Builders.