Introduction
The Michener Award for public service journalism honours independent, fearless journalism. Journalism that informs, challenges power imbalances, exposes corruption and empowers those on the margins. Journalism that changes policy and practices to improve the lives of citizens.
These are groundbreaking stories that have impact and bring about results. For example, fair compensation for victims of thalidomide after a Globe and Mail series. Twenty million dollars to upgrade logging roads after the Prince George Citizen documented a staggering number of road deaths in northern British Columbia. A new mayor and council for Toronto after the Toronto Star unmasked the illegal and reckless behaviour of Mayor Rob Ford. Regular testing of Taser stun guns after an in-depth independent analysis by CBC/Radio-Canada and The Canadian Press exposed potentially fatal problems.
These stories come from politics, environment, health and social policy, public affairs and international issues. These stories were honoured with a Michener Award because they achieved impact in the public interest and helped to improve the lives of Canadians.
The Michener Award emerged from a long-held understanding of the role of journalism as a pillar of democracy. Lindsay Crysler, who was the senior editor at the Ottawa Citizen in 1970 when the award was founded and would later become the executive editor of the Montreal Gazette and founder of the journalism program at Concordia University, said “My idealistic view of journalism in that early era was that it was a public service and we were looking out for the public. This award is exactly for that. This one was specifically for something you improved in the community or showed the community how to improve. And I thought that was terrific and something we should really all be doing.”1
Back in 1970, while other journalism organizations gave industry awards for categories such as spot news, sports, feature writing and business, no award specifically recognized the public service aspect of journalism. The Michener, as it’s called, has become Canada’s most coveted journalism award, like the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in the United States.
“It’s the one,” said David Walmsley, editor-in-chief of the Globe and Mail, sweeping his arm to the right where the framed citation hangs proudly behind his desk. “It’s the Michener that goes on this wall: nothing else. The reason for that is that it’s because of its unimpeachable excellence and it stands the test of time.”2
The Michener Award is the only award in Canada with a singular focus on journalism in the public service. It honours the collective effort of a media organization to produce measurable change through its journalism produced in a calendar year. It stands out because it is open to all media — French and English news organizations, daily and community newspapers, periodicals, online publications, and radio and television stations from every corner of Canada.3 To level the playing field for smaller media organizations, an independent panel of judges considers the resources of each applicant. It is not the quality of writing or layout or visuals that make a Michener; it is the impact of the journalism and the degree of arm’s-length public benefit the journalism has generated.
For longtime journalist, author and educator John Fraser, the Michener Award is unique because of its focus on stories that address wrongs in society; they can spark changes in public policy and processes. He explains it this way: “They lead to civic responsibility and civic citizenship. So, you can point to the idealistic, but in fact, what the Micheners sort of underpin is the practical world of journalism that can affect change in society. Rather than seismic changes, it’s just regular honest reporting of stuff that’s slightly out of kilter. I think of the Micheners as something that helps us be a decent and better society.”4
No one was more passionate about the Michener Awards than the late John Honderich, a longtime Michener director, editor and publisher of the Toronto Star and chair of Torstar, the parent corporation. From his corner office in One Yonge Street in the heart of downtown Toronto, Honderich ran the largest daily circulation newspaper in the greater Toronto area with fierce pride. “An exultant force”5 in the industry, he lived and breathed the Toronto Star; it was his passion to the exclusion of everything else.
It was no secret that Honderich liked to win. When the Star didn’t, the chief judge could expect a phone call about two weeks after the awards ceremony. Honderich, with his big booming voice, would let loose, unsuccessfully probing for some insider information. But once he had blown off steam, he’d concede that the judges had made the right choice and added quickly that the Star would be back next year. The attraction of the Michener, Honderich said, is that it has the respect and distinction that do not exist with other journalism awards. “The public service aspect of it, that you hear you’ve done particular articles to that end, that they have had impact. . . . So it’s at the highest level and that’s how it’s viewed,” and not just by the Toronto Star.6
The following pages highlight fifty years of award-winning journalism through the lens of a volunteer organization that has maintained its focus on journalism that benefits the public. From the media silos of the 1970s to the contemporary world of digital and multi-platform media, the Michener Awards Foundation has kept step and, like the industry, adapted to drastic changes.
Advocates, like Governor General Roland Michener (1967-1974), Bill MacPherson of the Federation of Press Clubs and Paul Deacon of the Michener Awards Foundation, believed in the purpose of the award and fought to keep it relevant. Media organizations funded in-depth journalism, even in tough economic times. Reporters and editors, who through their passion for and commitment to journalism, gave voice to the marginalized, shamed and challenged the powerful, and brought about legislative and policy changes to make our country a better place. Fifty years of award-winning journalism are woven into each chapter of this book.
The Michener Award is a signal to the public that the work of media organizations matters. In 2024, this kind of support is more critical than ever. Fact-based journalism is under attack from a flood of misinformation and disinformation peddled as news on social media and the deep web. Professional journalists face threats and harassment fuelled by those who label journalists as the enemy and dismiss their stories as “alternative news.”7 Various opinion polls rank journalists fairly low on the trust scale, down with lawyers and bankers.8
The journalism recognized by the Michener Awards stands in stark contrast to that dark view of the media. At the 2021 virtual awards ceremony, APTN reporter Cullen Crozier captured the essence of the award when he described Michener stories as those that are “challenging status quo, holding truth to power, forcing conversations and hopefully effecting meaningful and lasting change.”9 He and fellow reporter Kenneth Jackson received the 2020 Michener Award for the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network’s investigation into the failings of child protection agencies following the suicide of three sisters in seven months.
The Michener Award, and the values it represents, remain highly relevant today. In many countries around the world such freedom is at risk. Media outlets face closures and suppression from authorities, big businesses and hostile governments. Viceregal patronage from the highest office in Canada gives lustre to the Michener Award. More importantly, as Kenneth Jackson of APTN said, the award highlights the value the state puts on the essential role of independent journalism as a “guardian of the public interest” in our democratic society.10
As former Governor General David Johnston explains, “Professional journalism is key to how democracy, the economy and healthy communities function. And so, you use a Governor General’s award like the Michener Awards to celebrate the best of the profession and use it as a kind of light to encourage all Canadians to cherish that profession and to attain even higher standards.”11
For fifty-plus years the public service values of the Michener Award have propelled publishers, editors, senior producers and reporters at news organizations to “aspire to higher ground.”12 As Edward Greenspon, former editor-in-chief of the Globe and Mail, sees it, the “Michener values” naturally align with the mission of news organizations in fulfilling their democratic function.13 For media outlets, a Michener nomination is coveted proof that their work is contributing to the health of their geographic or virtual community.
For reporters, editors and producers, the Michener is the holy grail of journalism, but it is more than just the prestige. It is evidence that journalism has an important role to play in helping to improve society. “It demonstrates to those who care what journalism means to the country,” said George Hutchinson, a reporter at the London Free Press in the 1970s.14
Data journalist David McKie has won his fair share of journalism awards, but, above all, he treasures the one Michener Award he earned in 2009 for a CBC/Radio Canada and Canadian Press investigation into the use of Tasers by the RCMP. “Because of what it stands for,” he said with a big smile. “Your work has led to measurable change. You’ve actually saved lives in many instances. Your work has resulted in the implementation of important public policy that has made lives better.”15
As Michener chief judge Margo Goodhand said at the opening of the virtual ceremony for the 2020 awards, “Micheners change lives and laws and speak for those who cannot speak for themselves.”16 The stories from the six finalists that year gave a platform to the silenced voices of public health officials, abused hockey players, trafficked children, seniors in long-term care, employees of Rideau Hall and children lost in the child protection maze.
Since its creation in 1970, various journalism organizations (now the Michener Awards Foundation) have administered the award — handling communications, advertising, fundraising and organizing the annual awards ceremony at Rideau Hall hosted by the governor general.
The volunteer directors of the Michener Awards Foundation have always taken great care to ensure the judging panel — made up of a chief judge and four or five other members — is arm’s-length and impartial. The judges bring diverse journalism experience; they’re often retired editors, reporters, publishers or journalism educators with no current ties or obligations to media outlets. Their independence from meddling from outside influences, including the Michener board, the industry and Rideau Hall, has given the award its elite status. It also gives the judges the freedom to break from the pack, as they did in 2013 when the Toronto Star won for its exposé of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, even though the same submission did not receive a single nomination from the prestigious National Newspaper Awards.
Since 1971, ten governors general — five with journalism backgrounds — have hosted the Michener Award ceremony.17 They have opened their residence at Rideau Hall to honour hard-hitting, investigative public service journalism. Journalism that exposes, angers, shames and, in the process, brings about meaningful change in the lives of Canadians. No institution is off limits — not even Rideau Hall and the Office of the Governor General.
If the founders and Roland Michener had been online for the virtual ceremony honouring journalism from 2020, there might have been a moment of discomfort when the president of the Michener Foundation, Pierre-Paul Noreau, read the citation for CBC News — “Inside Rideau Hall.” The coverage exposed Rideau Hall as a “house of horrors” with “a toxic work environment, evidence of questionable spending and a flawed government vetting process.”18 The CBC stories led to an investigation and the resignation of Governor General Julie Payette and her top bureaucrat. But then the founders probably would have taken a deep breath and nodded. They would have understood that the award was set up to encourage independent journalism in the service of the public. “It’s about forcing conversations and getting answers the public can’t,” said CBC’s Jamie Strashin, a 2019 award finalist.19
Between 1970 and 2020, fifty-seven Michener Awards and 221 honourable mentions and citations of merit have been presented at Rideau Hall. The healthy number of entries year upon year, even in a pandemic, is a repudiation of claims that independent journalism is dead and that it has no value in our wired and social world. The award is an affirmation that citizens benefit from accurate, reliable, fact-based information.
Journalism for the Public Good: The Michener Awards at Fifty
This project started during a sabbatical at Massey College at the University of Toronto in 2018-19, where I was a visiting scholar. For almost fifteen years, I had a unique behind-the-scenes view of the Michener Awards Foundation. I served as an awards judge, chief judge, vice president, president and secretary to the board between 2007 and 2022. This project was undertaken independently of the Foundation and is self-funded. I had unfettered access to the internal electronic minutes and documents from the Michener Awards Foundation, including its historic documents — four bankers’ boxes, stored at Carleton University’s School of Journalism and Communications, crammed with meeting minutes, correspondence, emails, annual reports and other gems that go back to 1967.
My research also took me to Library and Archives Canada and the Rideau Hall archives. I am profoundly grateful to former Michener director Tim Kotcheff for access to his archival website, a repository of Michener history. Journalism for the Public Good: The Michener Award at Fifty also includes excerpts from interviews, conversations and email exchanges with more than fifty people, including five retired governors general, former presidents of the Michener Award Foundation going back to 1990, board members, judges, members of the Michener family, along with publishers, editors and journalists. Combined, these resources document the story of how an inspired idea to honour media organizations for journalism in the public interest developed into Canada’s premier journalism award.
This story begins in the late 1960s and early 1970s — a time of tremendous growth, prosperity and optimism in Canada. Chapter One explores the pivotal role of Roland Michener in the creation of the award during a time of change in the journalism industry. In its very creation, the Michener Award responded to industry needs and a movement among journalists. The Micheners honoured media outlets that produced investigative stories with measurable impact and sent a strong message to the industry that journalism in the public interest was the highest form of journalism.
In the early 1970s, investigative journalism was starting to take hold and challenge the boundaries of reporting. Chapter Two examines how the Michener Award administrators worked with little support to position the Michener Award as Canada’s Pulitzer Prize for Public Service within the industry.
Chapter Three links the creation of the Michener Awards Foundation/La Fondation des Prix Michener in 1983 to the growing reputational success of the awards in the 1980s and a commitment by media companies to invest in public service journalism. Chapter Four focuses on expanding the mission of the new foundation. In addition to honouring investigative journalism, the directors built a culture of journalism in the public interest through the creation of special awards, education opportunities and outreach.
As we see in Chapter Five, by the end of the 1980s, the award earned the respect of the industry for the integrity and independence of its judging and the ongoing patronage of the governor general. It was at this moment that an overture from the Canadian Journalism Foundation in 1989 forced the Michener board to choose its path — a financially stable partnership or independence.
Chapter Six looks at the 1990s, a decade of leadership changes with the loss of its key founders — Roland Michener, Bill MacPherson and Paul Deacon. A series of new leaders addressed the perpetual challenge of attracting entries from French-language and small media outlets outside the golden triangle of Ottawa-Toronto-Montreal. The organization struggled through a fresh round of financial difficulties that emerged from the changing journalism landscape.
A new century brought the rise of the Internet and social media and panic among established media outlets. Chapter Seven documents a vicious newspaper war and the frenzy of consolidation, closures and mergers in the early 2000s that left media organizations heavy with debt and light on journalists. Despite institutional constraints, journalists found ways to pursue public interest stories through collaboration and other methods. A Michener nomination was more than validation of a job well done; it was a way to leverage resources for the next story.
The collapse of the media business model hit regional and smaller broadcasters and newspapers hard. By the 2010s, big media organizations dominated the roster of Michener finalists. Chapter Eight looks at some of the investigative stories that resonated nationally — racial profiling, cancer care and systemic intuitional problems in Canada’s armed forces and policing.
Chapter Nine details how in 2017-18 the Michener Foundation faced and resolved internal governance issues and its ongoing relationship with the Office of the Governor General.
Journalism for the Public Good: The Michener Awards at Fifty concludes with the story of an unexpected opportunity from former governor general David Johnston. In 2019, in an interview for this book, he suggested the Michener Awards Foundation partner with the Rideau Hall Foundation (RHF), an organization formed to “amplify the impact of the Office of the Governor General as a central institution of Canadian democracy.”20 Its focus on democracy fits with the Michener mandate of journalism in public service.
The 2020 union has given the Micheners access to professional resources it lacked as a volunteer organization — communication, marketing and fundraising. This is a renaissance for the Michener Awards Foundation as it takes stock, reimagines and expands to provide impetus for public interest journalism for the next fifty years.
These are difficult times for journalism in Canada. Social media is a marketplace for mis- and disinformation that undermines and threatens fact-based journalism. Media organizations, faced with declining advertising and readership and rising costs, are laying off journalists by the hundreds and shuttering outlets to save their business. To stanch further closures of legacy media and provide help for startups, the federal government introduced tax measures in 2019. This move, along with the Online News Act, Bill C-18, raises questions about government meddling and the independence of media. While news organization sort out their business model, journalists continue to produce stories that uncover wrongs, catalyze policy changes and in the process win the Michener Award, the highest honour in Canadian journalism.