Genevieve Simms

Fast Forward Weekly garnered a blue ribbon in the best newspaper category in the Canadian Community Newspaper Association (CCNA) 2008 Better Newspapers Competition and four of its writers earned individual awards.

Current staff writer Jeremy Klaszus and former Fast Forward intern Adrian Morrow received first prize for outstanding reporter initiative for their news feature “Investigating Calgary’s ‘Wild West’ campaign financing.” The two journalists examined campaign contribution disclosure statements submitted by candidates after the 2004 municipal election, finding that, in the words of one watchdog, “Basically, there are no rules.” Subsequently, other city media outlets picked up on the story.

Morrow, now a second-year journalism student at Toronto’s Ryerson University, had heard rumours about problems with Calgary's system of campaign financing. “Not surprisingly,” he says, “it turned out that the development industry was giving tons of money to the various candidates. What did surprise me was that the rules around campaign financing were so lax.”

“Fast Forward gave us the time and space to go deep, to publish more than 3,500 words on an important but admittedly unsexy election topic,” says Klaszus. “As a reporter, I'm impressed by that ongoing commitment to quality reporting that's in the public interest. That commitment is hugely important in a media landscape where superficiality often takes precedence over substance.”

Klaszus also received a second place award for outstanding reporter initiative in 2006 for “God Mart,” a series on evangelical mega-churches.

Natalie St-Denis received a best feature series award for “Out of Africa,” her five-part examination of Africa’s pressing social and economic problems, the struggles and aspirations of Calgary’s African community, and the agencies working to benefit Africans and African-Canadians.

St-Denis was awakened to African issues by a trip to the continent. “It boggles the mind that Africa is poorer today than it was 25 years ago. And in many ways, the West is much to blame. My goal in writing the series was to create more than awareness. If people understand how our consumer behaviours affect families in developing countries, then perhaps more people will consider buying, for instance, fair-trade organic coffee, chocolate and sugar. Each one of us is responsible for what is happening in the world, and it’s by owning that responsibility that we can affect change.”

Illustrator Genevieve Simms created the cover art for the Africa series as well as the illustrations that accompanied the entire five-part series. She has been a regular Fast Forward contributor since graduating from the Alberta College of Art and Design in 2006. Communication Arts (CA) — a prestigious U.S. visual communication magazine — has chosen Simms’s Out of Africa cover for inclusion in its July illustration annual.

Simms suggests the meaningful subject matter of the series was a big factor in making the standout image. “I think Africa's story is an important one, and illustration is a good way to tell these stories. Pictures can sometimes articulate something about a story not explicitly written in the words, bringing something to the story as a whole.”

Former Fast Forward staff writer Amy Steele received a third place award for environmental writing for “Saving Suffield.” In her feature news story, Steele examined the impact of oil and gas development on Canadian Forces Base Suffield, an internationally significant block of native prairie northwest of Medicine Hat. It provides crucial habitat for numerous species at risk and is one of the last large, intact areas of native prairie in North America.

“I was shocked to see wells that had been built right within wetlands,” says Steele. “It was also shocking to see two major oil spill cleanups in progress on the day I visited Suffield. Because it's in such a remote area, the situation there has been off the radar to a large degree, although that's definitely changing with EnCana's application to drill 1,275 natural gas wells within the Suffield National Wildlife Area, which is a portion of CFB Suffield that is protected from any development.”

Steele, who now works for the Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows Times in British Columbia’s Lower Mainland, also received a third place CCNA award in 2007 for best feature story. “Boom gone bad?” probed the negative side-effects of Calgary’s supercharged economy.