Four More Tyee Award Nominations. Plus Major Wins

The Tyee team is humbled and delighted to receive four more national journalism award nominations after celebrating two major wins in recent days.

Yesterday, Tyee founding editor and editor-in-chief David Beers won the 2026 Digital Publishing Leadership Award, the highest recognition given by the National Media Awards Foundation.

And last Friday evening at a gala in Toronto, Tyee associate editor Sarah Krichel won a prestigious National Newspaper Award, a first for The Tyee.

Krichel’s essays on reality television and inconspicuous AI in The Tyee’s Weekender culture section won the 2025 National Newspaper Award for arts and entertainment writing. The judges said Krichel’s essays “demonstrate arts reporting at its most incisive.”

“At a time when Big Tech and AI and disinformation threaten our rights and safety, I continue to turn to indie media to better understand myself and the world around me,” Krichel told attendees at the National Newspaper Awards gala while accepting her award on Friday night. “To me, all the work that the arts journalists in this room do is an inevitable force for change.”

This morning, the Digital Publishing Awards announced its 2026 nominees. The Tyee is shortlisted across three categories.

‘A powerful and important exposé’

Tyee reporter and senior editor Jen St. Denis, alongside senior editor Paul Willcocks, have been nominated for Best Feature Article: Long for “What Really Happened to Katica? A Tyee Investigation.” St. Denis tracked the circumstances surrounding the death of 41-year-old Katica Dusanic, who was found dead in a single-room occupancy hotel in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside in 2021. While the coroner determined her death was caused by a drug overdose, Dusanic’s mother believes she was murdered.

“This is a powerful and important exposé,” editor Willcocks said. “Jen St. Denis told a complicated story with sensitivity and through in-depth research revealed major flaws in the investigation into Katica Dusanic’s death.”

“This isn’t a one-off,” Willcocks noted. “Jen has been doing amazing reporting on both missing women and problems in the coroners service.”

Tracking big shifts in BC’s political landscape

Tyee reporters Andrew MacLeod, Jen St. Denis and Michelle Gamage, alongside senior editors Paul Willcocks and andrea bennett, have been nominated for Best News Coverage for a suite of work titled “B.C.’s Insurgent Right.”

Willcocks sets the stage: “B.C. politics blow up in late 2024. The big-tent BC Liberal Party was renamed BC United, then ceded the non-NDP vote to the BC Conservatives. Which almost formed government. And then unravelled.”

“As that was happening, Andrew MacLeod, Jen St. Denis and Michelle Gamage all worked on stories that tracked the province’s shifting political landscape, amidst upticks in residential school denialism and anti-immigrant sentiments. The Tyee set out to explore how the BC Conservatives would reconcile the far-right and social conservative elements within their party with the more traditional ‘fiscal’ conservativism,” Willocks added.

“The result,” said bennett, “is a suite of stories that continue to be relevant and useful for readers — these tensions aren’t going away any time soon, and that’s reflected in our continuing coverage.”

General Excellence in Digital Publishing

The Tyee has been nominated for a 2026 General Excellence in Digital Publishing Award for a medium-sized publication. The Tyee won this award in 2020 and 2022, and we were finalists in 2023 and 2025.

“To once again be in the running for gold for overall excellence is truly gratifying,” said Tyee editor Beers. “This is recognition for not only doing journalism at the highest level, but doing it consistently so as to make a cumulative impact. This is what we all strive to achieve every day. Everyone on The Tyee’s team plays a role and deserves to feel proud.”

Recognition for climate coverage

We’re thrilled to see Tyee freelance journalist Lauren Watson, with editor Jen St. Denis, nominated for the Canadian Journalism Foundation’s Climate Solutions Reporting Award for her 2025 news feature on a wildfire in Squamish, B.C.

The winners of the 2026 Digital Publishing Awards will be announced at a June 5 reception in Toronto. The winner of the Climate Solutions Reporting Award will be announced at a June 10 gala in Toronto.

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