An ambulance arrives to help an overdose victim in Vancouver.Rafal Gerszak/The Globe and Mail
The Globe and Mail has received four nominations at British Columbia's Jack Webster Awards for the newspaper's work on the opioid crisis, political donations, the Trans Mountain pipeline project, and the Vancouver region's real estate market.
The winners will be announced on Oct. 12 in Vancouver.
The B.C. bureau's Cheque Day project is nominated for best breaking news reporting – print. Globe journalists spent approximately 24 hours on Downtown Eastside streets to get a first-hand look at the fentanyl overdose epidemic on Cheque Day – the day each month when income-assistance cheques are handed out.
Journalists who took part in the project include Andrea Woo, Sunny Dhillon, Wendy Stueck, Mike Hager, Mark Hume, Ian Bailey, Ben Nelms, Rafal Gerszak, James Keller and Luiz Lopes.
The Globe's coverage of B.C.'s campaign finance laws is also nominated in the breaking-news category. The newspaper's reporting showed there are few limits on political fundraising in B.C., which has increasingly come to be described as the "Wild West" of campaign finance laws. The Globe found that lobbyists were breaking one of the only rules in place to restrict donations by giving in their own name using money from the companies they represent.
The story prompted an RCMP investigation, which remains under way, into the fundraising activities of the province's political parties. Kathy Tomlinson, Gary Mason and Justine Hunter are the Globe journalists named in that entry.
Ms. Hunter is also nominated in the digital-journalism category – along with Jimmy Jeong and Mychaylo Prystupa – for Weigh Anchor, which followed an oil tanker's journey from a Burnaby terminal to the open ocean. The project used a combination of text, graphics and video to chart the risky course those tankers would need to navigate.
Ms. Tomlinson has a second nomination in the business category for her look at the purchase of B.C. farmland by investors and speculators. Her investigation found investors and speculators are buying up prime agricultural land , including areas in the protected Agricultural Land Reserve, while taking advantage of tax loopholes intended for farmers.
The Globe won three Webster awards in both 2015 and 2016.
Presented by the Jack Webster Foundation, named after a long-time radio and television broadcaster, the awards recognize the work of B.C.-based journalists in print, radio, television and online.