Tag Archives: awards

| Media

Gazette honours Con U J-school kids

Earlier this week, The Gazette distributed awards in the form of bursaries to some Concordia University students who, one would assume, are worthy of their awards through some form of awesomeness.

I was surprised to recognize two of the names, since I’ve been pretty detached from my alma mater for three years now (long enough for everyone who was there to have gotten a degree and moved on).

A side note to these journalists-to-be: Set up blogs or other forms of personal websites so when people like me talk about you, we have something to link to. Remember, you are whatever Google says you are.

The winners are as follows:

Congrats. Now go back to contemplating how this whole industry is on a downward spiral of doom.

| Opinion

XM digs moderately into pocket for Canadian artists

XM Canada wants the world to know that it’s sponsoring a music awards show with a whopping two categories, and investing a grand total of $50,000 in prize money. For the mathematically challenged, that’s $25,000 apiece, or enough to cover airfare to the ceremony.

The awards will be given out in September, and rather than judge them based on merit, they’re putting it to a popularity vote.

Between this and the Junos, I think it’s safe to say that Canadian artists are well cared for.

| TV

Gémeaux includes web video category

The nominations for the Gémeaux awards came out yesterday. Included is a new category for web video series, and the obvious ones are nominated.

From the list of nominees (PDF) we see:

  • RadCan sweeps the public affairs category
  • 110% shockingly snubbed in the sports series category
  • Les Francs-Tireurs have a couple of nominations (including for hosts Patrick Lagacé and Dick Martineau), but sadly none in the hair and makeup category
  • Chez Schwartz is nominated for best original music in a documentary
  • Les Lavigueur, la vraie histoire dominates with 15 nominations, followed by TVA’s Le Négociateur with 14.
  • TQS’s Flash got a nomination for best cultural magazine show. It’s the only nomination I could find for a TQS show.
| Media

Heinrich wins CAJ award

The Gazette’s Jeff Heinrich, who has been following the reasonable accommodation situation in Quebec as the paper’s diversities reporter, and whose tireless work following the Bouchard-Taylor Commission got him a scoop on (part of) the report, has been honoured with an award by the Canadian Association of Journalists. And, of course, the paper is very happy about that.

The complete list of winners is in this press release.

The CBC was the big winner, picking up three awards in the three radio/TV categories, which I guess qualifies as a “sweep,” according to Inside the CBC. Other winners included the Globe/Citizen for a joint piece on a man who got into witness protection and then committed a “heinous crime,” and the Star for a series of investigations into charities’ finances (other related articles are in the sidebar).

| Media, West Island

QCNA awards excellence in grandmother-turns-100 reporting

This is Nikki Mantell of the Low Down to Hull & Back News, which I have to admit is the most awesome name for a community newspaper I’ve ever seen. If she seems particularly cheerful to you, it’s not just because she’s so adorable with her golden turkey award, or because she has a secret crush on photographer Adam Franc. She also won an award for best local affairs editorial at the Quebec Community Newspaper Association Awards, which honour excellence in (anglophone) Quebec community newspapers. Her paper also won awards for best sports story, best feature photo and best front page, as well as a number of second and third-place finishes, making it a big winner that night.

Another big winner was, unsurprisingly, the West Island Chronicle, which had five first-place finishes, though two were for freelancer Peter McCabe, one was for a former reporter who now works at Canadian Press, and one was for an advertising salesperson.

The Chronicle also won the best overall newspaper award.

The best website category went to the Canadian Jewish News, followed by the Chronicle (strange since it’s identical to every other Transcontinental weekly paper’s website) and the Quebec Chronicle-Telegraph, which as you can see is all crazy-Web 2.0 without silly things like top stories.

Full list of award winners (PDF)

| Opinion, Web design

Is Bell.ca the best commercial website in Quebec?

Some consulting firm we’ve never heard of has released its rankings of the top 25 consumer-oriented commercial websites in Quebec. At the top of the list:

  1. Bell.ca, which doesn’t work with Safari.
  2. Radio-Canada.ca, whose address they got wrong, and which opens audio content in strange 1px-by-1px pop-up windows.
  3. Desjardins.com, which won’t let you me log into electronic banking with Firefox, and whose top-notch security includes such impossible-for-anyone-else-to-guess questions as “what high school did you graduate from?”
  4. Videotron.com, which admittedly I haven’t had issues with, even if their cable and Internet service has much room for improvement.
  5. Metro.ca, which uses Javascript needlessly, has a badly-designed site map page (the stupid web 2.0 sharing buttons hides some of the text) and shows 0 stores in Montreal with delivery service available.

Of course, when you judge websites through a mathematical formula that suggests quality of a website is directly proportional to the size of the organization running it, this is what you get.