SABEW Canada names Best in Business finalists

The Canadian chapter of the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing (SABEW) is happy to announce the finalists for its 8th annual Best in Business Awards competition, recognizing outstanding business reporting published and produced in 2021.

This year, we saw a record number of submissions from across the country. SABEW Canada extends a giant thank you to everyone who submitted work, from the largest news organizations in the country to individual freelancers, in what was another taxing year for journalists. We’d also like to thank our distinguished judges, chosen from among Canadian and U.S. news outlets and journalism schools. We couldn’t do this without you.

We’re hoping to celebrate the finalists and announce the winners on June 21 at an outdoor event in Toronto (details TK). In the meantime, here are the finalists for this year’s awards:

Audio or visual storytelling

• “Down to Business” by Gabe Friedman (Financial Post)
• “Why it Costs so Much to Build a Home” by Marcy Nicholson, Dave Merrill, Cedric Sam (Bloomberg)
• “Stress Test, Seasons 3 and 4” by Rob Carrick, Roma Luciw, Kiran Rana, Hannah Sung, Latifa Abdin, Kyle Fulton, Carlay Ream-Neal, Amy Chyan and Zahra Khozema (Globe and Mail)

Beat reporting

• Sean Silcoff on technology (Globe and Mail)
• Richard Warnica on business and politics (Toronto Star)
• Alex Posadzki on telecom (Globe and Mail)

Breaking news

• “Bridging Finance Placed into Receivership as OSC Investigates” by Tim Kiladze and Greg McArthur (Globe and Mail)
• Gamestop by Pete Evans (CBC News)
• “Rogers Strikes Deal to Buy Shaw in a Deal that Would Transform Canada’s telecom Sector” by Andrew Willis, Alexandra Posadzki, Jeffrey Jones (Globe and Mail)

Commentary

• Martin Patriquin (The Logic)
• Rita Trichur (Globe and Mail)
• Rob Carrick (Globe and Mail)

Editorial newsletter

• The Logic briefing (The Logic)
• FP Investor by Andy Holloway (Financial Post)
• Investor Newsletter by Scott Barlow, Rob Carrick, Darcy Keith (Globe and Mail)

Feature (long-form)

• “The Show Will Go On” by Jason Kirby (Report on Business magazine)
• “Stacked” by Joe Castaldo (Report on Business magazine)
• “Vancouver’s Racism Problem” by Natalie Obiko Pearson (Bloomberg)

Feature (short-form)

• “Restaurant Woes” by Susan Krashinsky Robertson, Chris Hannay, Irene Galea (Globe and Mail)
• “Out of Breath: Inside Breather’s Rise and Fall” by Martin Patriquin (The Logic)
• “Defund this Pipeline” by Alastair Marsh and Danielle Bochove (Bloomberg)

Investigative

• “Several of Doug Ford’s Key Pandemic Decisions Swayed by Business Interests” by Richard Warnica, Andrew Bailey (Toronto Star)
• “The Secret Bondfield Files: Records Outline Alleged Kickbacks Between Former Executives Over St. Michael’s Hospital bid” by Greg McArthur and Karen Howlett (Globe and Mail)
• “Dye & Durham Hikes Software Prices” by Sean Silcoff and Jaren Kerr (Globe and Mail)

Package

• “Canada’s $110.6-billion Wage Subsidy Program is Shrouded in Secrecy” by Patrick Brethour, Tom Cardoso, David Milstead, Vanmala Subramaniam (Globe and Mail)
• “What Will it Take for Us to Get the Message” by Adria Vasil, David Suzuki, Sheila Watt-Cloutier, Annamie Paul, Richard Curtin (Corporate Knights)
• “Uncharitable” by Claire Brownell, with reporting from Murad Hemmadi, Martin Patriquin, David Reevely and Lu Xu and research assistance from Hanna Lee and Allan Tong (The Logic)

­­Personal finance and investing

• “TikTok and TFSAs: How Gen Z and Millennials are Finding Personal Finance Salvation in an Unexpected place,” by Bianca Bharti (Financial Post)
• “Millennial Money,” by Evelyn Kwong (Toronto Star)
• “Banks Halt Sales of Third-Party Mutual Funds” by Clare O’Hara (Globe and Mail)

Profile

• “About Time” by Joanna Pachner (Report on Business magazine)
• “The Bay Street Whiz Kid Who Wasn’t: Searching for the Real Gary Ng” by Greg McArthur, Mark Rendell, Clare O’Hara, Tim Kiladze (Globe and Mail)
• “BDC and Isabelle Hudon” by Catherine McIntyre (The Logic)

Scoop

• “Rogers Board Struggle” by Scott Deveau and Derek DeCloet (Bloomberg)
• “Canada Pension Boss Jumps Vaccine Queue” by Jenny Strasburg, Summer Said, and Jacquie McNish (Wall Street Journal)
• “Rogers” by Alexandra Posadzki, Andrew Willis (Globe and Mail)

Trade article

• “Canadian Shoppers Grab Rare Chance To Descend on US Border Towns” by Garry Marr (CoStar News)
• “Ask me Anything” by Daniel Fish (Precedent)
• “Return-to-Work Programs Can Smooth Over Career Gaps” by Leah Golob (Investment Executive)

Jeff Sanford Best Young Journalist Award

Our fourth annual Jeff Sanford Best Young Journalist Award goes to Jacob Lorinc of The Toronto Star.

Jacob graduated from the University of Toronto in 2019 and joined the Star’s business section as a reporter in January 2021, at the height of COVID-19’s second wave. As Star business editor Duncan Hood said in his nomination letter: “It’s not often a young journalist jumps almost directly from graduation to being a key member of the business team at one of the largest papers in the country. It’s even less common to see such a journalist pen cover story after cover story, with several pulling in almost 100,000 page views as readers discover his articulate coverage of some of the most interesting and complex issues facing business in Canada today.”

Since joining the Star, Jacob has embarked on a number of enterprise projects, including a feature on how some of Canada’s highest-paid CEOs earned multimillion-dollar wage hikes while tens of thousands of Canadian workers were laid off; how an Ontario city councillor capitalized on house-flipping while the real estate market surged; the impact on first-time home buyers of changes to mortgage rules; and an exclusive on how Air Canada changed course on its ticket refund policy to help secure a government bailout.