WCR This Week

The Western Catholic Reporter has again been honoured for general excellence among Canadian Church newspapers.

The WCR received the second place award for general excellence among regional Church newspapers at the annual convention of the Canadian Church Press, held April 27-29 in Chicago.

The WCR also won four other awards from the CCP, which held its convention in conjunction with the Associated Church Press, the equivalent U.S. ecumenical press organization.

The judge, Linda Kay, director of the journalism program at Montreal’s Concordia University, said the WCR has a clean-looking front page and its choice of stories is interesting and intelligent.

First place in the best regional newspaper category went to Christian News Ontario, a regional edition of the national Christian Week.

The award for the best national newspaper went to The Catholic Register of Toronto. First prize awards in the two magazine categories went to Faith Today, an evangelical publication, and Scarboro Missions, a product of the Scarboro Foreign Mission Society.

PROFILE

Sara Francis, a Calgary-based freelance writer for the WCR, won a second place award in the biographical profile category for her article on Franciscan Brother Billy Isenor. The article, “Isenor on journey from homelessness to holiness,” appeared in the WCR’s Aug. 30 issue.

The WCR also won second-place awards in two design categories. It was recognized for overall layout and design of an entire issue as well as for feature layout of Joe McMorrow’s Oct. 18 article, “Can Church attendance bounce back?”

The judge, Gordon Preece, editorial art director of the Winnipeg Free Press, said the WCR is “overall a very good newspaper; very legible and easy to read.”

EDITORIAL

WCR editor Glen Argan won a third prize in the editorial writing category for his “F-35 jets blast peace alternative, leave $16B vapour trail.”

The judge, Stephen Heckbert, director of the public relations program at Algonquin College, called the editorial “an important addition to this debate.”

The editorial made “a good use of the rhetorical to ask whether there could be a better use of funds.”