It’s that time of year again when the National Newspaper Awards sends out a press release with a list of nominees, and each newspaper writes about what they’ve been nominated for.

The Globe and Mail far and away leads the pack with 15 nominations in various categories (including a sweep of the international reporting category), more than the entire Canwest chain combined. Following it is the Toronto Star with 8 nominations, La Presse and the Citizen with 6 each, and then the leftovers.

The Toronto National Post has only two nominations.

Here’s how Montreal did:

• The Gazette has two nominations:
  • Sue Montgomery’s story about Kimveer Gill, in the Long Features category (she was also nominated for an FPJQ award for the same story)
  • Linda Gyulai’s series about Montreal’s water system, in the Explanatory Work category.
• La Presse has six nominations:
  • Transportation reporter Bruno Bisson, in the Beat Reporting category
  • Émilie Côté’s story on rising waters in Bangladesh, in the Short Features category (combined with stories on arsenic contamination, ship recycling and more recently women burned with acid, it represents a very impressive body of work that makes the rest of us journalists seem small by comparison)
  • In the special project category, a worldwide look at the issue of potable water. (Côté also contributed to this from Bangladesh. There are other, related dossiers including a series of stories about water in Quebec.)
  • Michèle Ouimet’s story about Canadian aid money going to Afghanistan, in the Investigations category
  • André Pratte (whose name the press release, and therefore all newspapers reporting the nominees, misspelled), in the Editorials category
  • Serge Chapleau, in the Editorial Cartooning category
• Shockingly, the Journal was not nominated in any category, despite its tireless efforts to expose failings in language policy.
• Le Devoir, Metro and 24 Heures were also left empty-handed.

Also of local note, Globe photographer Charla Jones, nominated in the Feature Photography category for photos she took of Leonard Cohen in Montreal as part of this audio slideshow.

I’m still waiting for my NNA for my tireless reporting about local activities and blogs.