Hon. Edward Goff Penny Memorial Prizes for Young Canadian Journalists

OTTAWA - Corina Milic, formerly of The Sault Star, and James Bradshaw of The Globe and Mail are the 2008 winners of the Hon. Edward Goff Penny Memorial Prizes for Young Canadian Journalists. The awards program, administered by the Canadian Newspaper Association, provides for cash prizes of $1,500 to the winners in each circulation category, under 25,000 and over 25,000. The competition is open to journalists between the ages of 20-25 working for CNA member newspapers. The competition began in 1992. This is the 18th year for this award.

The Hon. Edward Goff Penny (1820-1881) rose from the position of reporter at the Montreal Herald in the late 1800s to editor and publisher. He was the first president of the Parliamentary Press Gallery in Ottawa and in 1874 became the first newspaperman to be appointed to the Senate. The awards in his name were established in 1991 at the bequest of the estate of the late Arthur Guy Penny, another newspaper editor and Quebec civil servant who was Edward Goff Penny's grandson. Arthur G. Penny, who died in 1963, asked that these prizes go specifically to young journalists between the ages of 20-25, and he set out the criteria by which the works were to be judged.

The judging, which was based on works published in 2008, was done by three senior editors selected by the CNA. Points were awarded to each entrant and the points were tabulated by CNA in Toronto. Both winners were 25 years old when their articles were written.

In the 25,000 and under category, the winner is Corina Milic, a former reporter with The Sault Star in Sault Ste. Marie now freelancing in Toronto. Two of her entries were part of a series following youth in the struggling town of Wawa, just north of Sault Ste. Marie. Milic spent a month as an intern in Rwanda and used that lens to write about hotel manager Paul Rusesabagina, the real-life inspiration for the Hollywood blockbuster, Hotel Rwanda. Her final entry pieced together the story of a young child's drowning at a local pool, while examining city pool protocols.

In the 25,000 and over category, the winner is James Bradshaw of The Globe and Mail. He won the judge's approval with three stories on the Tory government cuts to culture spending that started out with a routine announcement of minor cuts and ended with Bradshaw exposing a major list of cuts that quickly became a major election issue. When the government claimed arts funding was being increased, Bradshaw went to work, again digging through the numbers to reveal the downward trend in spending on the arts. His eye for feature writing was apparent in his fourth submission, profiling an art adviser and delving into the little-seen world of high profile art and the tension on the auction floor when millions of dollars are on the block.

The awards will be presented during the CNA/CCNA annual luncheon on Friday, May 22, 2009 at Le Centre Sheraton Hotel Montreal.