BarrieToday reporter Marg. Bruineman was among the winners announced at Thursday night's Canadian Online Publishing Awards.
Bruineman was honoured with a silver in the Best Blog Column/Videocast/Podcast category for her reporting on the controversy around short-term rentals as part of Village Media's Big Read series, which utilizes long-form journalism to investigate issues and stories that require much more detail and explanation.
"As a veteran journalist, Marg. is very adept at getting to the root of a story and connecting all of the dots together," said BarrieToday editor Raymond Bowe.
"Because the issues around short-term rentals are being dealt with in numerous municipalities, this story was tailor-made for a Big Read by looking into what cities, towns and townships are doing to fix the problems," he added.
For many people, short-term rentals are ruining their way of life as their neighbourhood becomes overrun with late-night parties as well as people swarming the dock and the wider waterfront. “It’s breaking up friendships; it’s putting neighbour against neighbour,” said one man who has a cottage in Innisfil.
Bruineman shares the honour with CollingwoodToday editor Erika Engel for her story on microfibres showing up in the Great Lakes, and SooToday reporter James Hopkin for his story about a young girl from Garden River First Nation who vanished without a trace after being taken to a Thunder Bay residential school.
All three reporters worked closely with Village Media editor-in-chief Michael Friscolanti in developing and fleshing out the stories as part of the Big Read series.
Heidi Urlichsen, who's a reporter at Sudbury.com, a sister site to BarrieToday, also won an award last night for Best Continuing Coverage of a Story. Urlichsen's story was about Laurentian University's insolvency and restructuring.
Now in its 14th year, the Canadian Online Publishing Awards showcase some of the best work in the Canadian publishing sector. This year’s crop of finalists came from 72 publishers from across the country.
