“I’m pretty excited about this one,” Wangersky says.
He’s no stranger to nominations. Actually, he’s fairly well aquainted with winning, having been recognized on several occasions for his fiction and non-fiction writing outside of his work at The Telegram.
He’s also been nominated for editorials before, but there are a lot of columnists in the category for the National Newspaper Award. This year, Wangersky — whose column is called Eastern Passages — is nominated with Pete McMartin of the Vancouver Sun, and Konrad Yakabuski of the Globe and Mail.
Each writer is nominated for three topics tackled in their columns — the three in Wangersky’s case being violent domestic assault, memory and journalism today.
He feels strongest about the domestic violence piece. He was covering court in Halifax and noticed that unmistakable commonality it shared with a courtroom in St. John’s provincial court.
“Like (Courtroom) No. 5 in St. John’s, everything gets delayed. And I was in this Halifax courtroom and they delayed 46 consecutive cases to another day,” Wangersky says.
Then a case came up about a man who had assaulted his girlfriend. She had a peace bond against him.
“She wanted the peace bond lifted so that she could live with him again, in part because Christmas was coming. So it’s just kind of sad and tragic. You know where this is going or you suspect you know where this is going. And it just doesn’t change,” he says.
When it comes to writing his column, Wangersky says it’s the readers who are the true judges and not the people who will decide on whether or not he gets a National Newspaper Award.
“Judges for something like this are three people. They have their own opinions of what makes a good newspaper column. For me, I’m much more concerned about the column I’m writing tomorrow than the one I wrote last month or last year.”
If Wangersky is being judged by his peers — in this case Thane Burnett, director of content for Atlantic Canada & Saskatchewan — he seems to have struck the right chord.
“Russell is what most journalists strive to be, a reporter who can write exceptionally well,” Burnett says. “If you look at the range of his topics, he goes from a funny observation one day to an investigative piece the next, readers never know what story he’ll tell next. Sharing his work on TC Media newspapers across Atlantic Canada, in a corner of Canada where each community is very different than the next, has proven that a good story told well, travels the distance.”
“I’m pretty excited about this one,” Wangersky says.
He’s no stranger to nominations. Actually, he’s fairly well aquainted with winning, having been recognized on several occasions for his fiction and non-fiction writing outside of his work at The Telegram.
He’s also been nominated for editorials before, but there are a lot of columnists in the category for the National Newspaper Award. This year, Wangersky — whose column is called Eastern Passages — is nominated with Pete McMartin of the Vancouver Sun, and Konrad Yakabuski of the Globe and Mail.
Each writer is nominated for three topics tackled in their columns — the three in Wangersky’s case being violent domestic assault, memory and journalism today.
He feels strongest about the domestic violence piece. He was covering court in Halifax and noticed that unmistakable commonality it shared with a courtroom in St. John’s provincial court.
“Like (Courtroom) No. 5 in St. John’s, everything gets delayed. And I was in this Halifax courtroom and they delayed 46 consecutive cases to another day,” Wangersky says.
Then a case came up about a man who had assaulted his girlfriend. She had a peace bond against him.
“She wanted the peace bond lifted so that she could live with him again, in part because Christmas was coming. So it’s just kind of sad and tragic. You know where this is going or you suspect you know where this is going. And it just doesn’t change,” he says.
When it comes to writing his column, Wangersky says it’s the readers who are the true judges and not the people who will decide on whether or not he gets a National Newspaper Award.
“Judges for something like this are three people. They have their own opinions of what makes a good newspaper column. For me, I’m much more concerned about the column I’m writing tomorrow than the one I wrote last month or last year.”
If Wangersky is being judged by his peers — in this case Thane Burnett, director of content for Atlantic Canada & Saskatchewan — he seems to have struck the right chord.
“Russell is what most journalists strive to be, a reporter who can write exceptionally well,” Burnett says. “If you look at the range of his topics, he goes from a funny observation one day to an investigative piece the next, readers never know what story he’ll tell next. Sharing his work on TC Media newspapers across Atlantic Canada, in a corner of Canada where each community is very different than the next, has proven that a good story told well, travels the distance.”
