Saturday night was golden for the Times & Transcript as the newspaper took home three top-place awards at the 30th annual Atlantic Journalism Awards - more than any other newspaper in Atlantic Canada - at an awards gala, held at the Harbourfront Marriott Hotel in Halifax.
The Times & Transcript's Brent Mazerolle won gold in spot news for his news story about a knife-wielding man who held a young woman hostage in Lakeville last summer, while photographer Viktor Pivovarov won gold for a photo from the same story.
Pivovarov has also been nominated for a National Newspaper Award for the same photograph, and will travel to Ottawa this weekend for the awards ceremony at the Canadian War Museum Friday night.
Mazerolle and Pivovarov were both previously Atlantic Journalism Award silver-place finalists as members of the Times & Transcript newsroom team recognized for its continuing coverage of the 2008 crash that killed seven members of the Bathurst High School Phantoms basketball team and their coach's wife.
Pivovarov was also part of the T&T newsroom team honoured with a silver-place finish for coverage of the September 11 terror attacks in 2001.
This was the first gold-place finish for each of them.
Also Saturday night, photographer Ron Ward won gold in the feature photography category for A Scary Ride, an image he captured of a mother and little girl reacting to a carnival ride at the Kent County fair last fall.
This was Ward's fourth AJA win, his first coming with a silver place finish in 1998. In 2005, he took gold in both the spot news print and feature categories. His winning feature photograph that year also taken at the Kent County Fair, coincidentally enough.
With two of his three photographer colleagues in the ballroom with him at the Marriott Saturday night, Ward used his acceptance speech to jokingly "call dibs" on this year's fair.
This is the second straight year a Times & Transcript photographer has produced the feature photo of the year. Last year's gold winner was Chief Photographer Greg Agnew.
Up against Ward in the same category Saturday night was Times & Transcript photographer Cole Burston, for his shot of a high school football player with his helmet almost comically askew as he is getting tackled.
Burston follows up his silver-place finish this week by travelling to Winnipeg at the end of the month for the News Photographers Association of Canada (NPAC) annual awards. A photo he took of a local baseball player at the moment the player is struck by a ball is nominated in the sports action category at those national awards.
As impressive as the accomplishments of the newspaper's photographers have been, two people who contribute significantly to the Times & Transcript in other ways were also honoured on the weekend.
Our editorial cartoonist Michael De Adder was a silver-place finisher at this year's awards. De Adder took gold at last year's awards and has multiple AJAs from his many years at Halifax's Daily News before he came to work for us.
We're also delighted to report Alec Bruce, who writes a daily column on the editorial page of the Times & Transcript, won two gold awards for work he did last year for Atlantic Business Magazine. Bruce has two previous gold medals for commentary and three other silver-place finishes in various categories.
The Times & Transcript's strong showing this year was just the tip of the iceberg for its parent company Brunswick News Inc.
Our sister publication the Telgraph-Journal garnered two gold and eight silver finishes this year, and the Daily Gleaner in Fredericton had two silver-place finishes including Mike De Adder's, whose services are shared by the Moncton and Fredericton newspapers. The Gleaner's opinion page editor Gisele McKnight won silver for an editorial entitled The Things He Did Right, a piece examining former Liberal premier Shawn Graham's record in office.
Rounding out BNI's great year was Jocelyne Comeau of the Moncton edition of HERE magazine, who took silver for best page presentation.
"I can't tell you how proud I am of the journalists who work for Brunswick News. That the awards touched on so many areas of what we do - spot news, business writing, feature and enterprise writing, design, photography, cartooning - speaks to the depth of talent at our papers," said Rob Warner, editor-in-chief of Brunswick News Inc.
"Our reporters and editors believe in what they do, and it shows in their work and the way they conduct themselves in our communities. I'm not surprised, but I am delighted."
Telegraph-Journal arts and culture editor Mike Landry along with Angie Kippers won gold for best page presentation for their design of a special commemorative Salon section on Molly Lamb Bobak.
Senior writer Marty Klinkenberg also won gold in the arts and entertainment category for a feature article that appeared in Salon, the weekend arts section, on New Brunswick famed painter Bobak. The same story is also nominated for a National Newspaper Award to be handed out Friday night at an awards ceremony at the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa.
The Telegraph-Journal also received eight silver awards. Reporter Jennifer Pritchett won silver in the enterprise reporting category for stories submitted on the financial crisis at the Tobique First Nation. She is also nominated for a National Newspaper Award for an extensive project on New Brunswick's First Nations communities.
Tamsin McMahon, now writing for the National Post in Toronto, won silver for business reporting for an in-depth investigative piece about Shawn Richard, a Dieppe-born investment banker who ran afoul of authorities in Australia. McMahon is also nominated for a National Newspaper Award to be handed out Friday, for business reporting for an article about two real-estate projects on Campobello that landed developers behind bars and most of the 14-kilometre-long island in foreign hands.
Sports editor Randy O'Donnell was an Atlantic Journalism Awards silver finalist for spot news coverage - the category won by Mazerolle - for a story he wrote about a brawl that broke out at last summer's Canadian Little League Championships in Saint John.
Reporter Rebecca Penty, now living in Calgary, won silver for a series of stories she wrote about shale gas exploration in the business writing category.
Brett Bundale, now a reporter working for the Telegraph-Journal in Halifax, was runner up for the Jim MacNeil New Journalist Award. Kathy Kaufield won silver for a feature article that appeared in Salon about Moncton artist Reg Noel. The piece was nominated in arts and entertainment reporting category.
Page editor Sonja Schrick won silver for her work in designing pages to go along with a special investigative story about a day in the life of the emergency room at the Saint John Regional Hospital. Greg Perry won silver for his body of work as editorial cartoonist.