The Presbyterian Record took home 16 awards from the Canadian Church Press and Associated Church Press conventions in May, including the A.C. Forrest Memorial Award for excellence in religious journalism.
Named in honour of a former editor of the United Church Observer, the annual award recognizes high quality, socially conscious writing and comes with a $1,000 cash prize. Staff writer Connie Wardle took the award this year for her April 2011 cover story about South Sudanese refugees living in Calgary. The judges called it “a powerful story very well told.” The piece also won first place in the in-depth treatment category.
Art director Caroline Bishop won three first place awards for her designs: the November 2011 issue won best cover, the September 2011 cover story topped the best layout and design category, and Violet Lemay’s illustration for the January 2011 issue won best original artwork.
Wardle took second place with her November 2011 interview with Stuart Clark, senior policy analyst with the Canadian Foodgrains Bank. Rev. Daniel Cho came in second in the opinion category for his article, Is Multiculturalism Bad for the Church? And Joyce Engel took third in the theological reflection category for her May 2011 article about motherhood.
The Record placed third among the top denominational magazines in Canada.
Record readers also won two awards for their letters to the editor: the CCP ranked them third and the ACP gave them first place.
Other awards from the ACP were: awards of merit for in-depth coverage of the East Africa famine in the November
2011 issue and for the Theology 101 department. Honourable mentions went to Nancy Calvert-Koyzis for her theological or scholarly article about women theologians in the May 2011 issue, to Laurence DeWolfe for his biblical interpretation in the June 2011 Progressive Lectionary column, and to Caroline Bishop for her design of the October 2011 cover story.
