Postmedia News reporter Lori Culbert nominated for National Newspaper Award (2024)

Postmedia News reporter Lori Culbert has been nominated for a National Newspaper Award in the short feature category for a story about an avid hiking family from Lions Bay who lost their seven-year-old daughter in a rock slide in 2014.

Culbert’s story, which ran on the front page of The Vancouver Sun on July 12, 2016, focused on Elizabeth and Michael Moore re-hiking the same trail a year and a half later with the couple’s new infant twins.

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The article showed how the couple was trying to balance both their grief for their lost daughter Erin and their excitement for the new twins, Sebastian and Madeleine.

The twins were born 16 months after Erin’s passing.

The hike took the group through the heart of acommunity trying to heal, including an area where a West Vancouver woodworking teachercraftedthe signs for the “Erin Moore Trail” and the girl’s Brownie troop and classmates decorated the entire pathwith hundreds of painted rocks, stuffies, figurines, banners and heartfelt messages.

The area was nicknamed “Erin’s Enchanted Forest.”

“We are thrilled with this well-deserved nomination,” said managing editor Valerie Casselton.

“Lori Culbert is a talented senior reporter who cares deeply about people and about her community. In the face of great challenges to newsrooms across the country, journalists like Lori Culbert and her colleagues every day prove the importance of committed, intelligent reporting and investigation.”

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For the 68th National Newspaper Awards, Toronto’s Globe and Mail leads all entrants with 19 nominations. Montreal’s La Presse has nine finalists, the Toronto Star eight, The Canadian Press five, and the Saskatoon StarPhoenix and Winnipeg Free Press each have three nominations in the competition, which is open to daily newspapers, news agencies, as well as online news sites approved for entry by the NNA Board of Governors.

Other organizations with multiple nominations include the National Post, Le Droit, the Toronto Sun and the Calgary Herald/Calgary Sun with two each.

Fifteen other organizations received one nomination each.

There are 70 nominations in 21 categories, selected from 959 entries for work published in 2016. Of 54 newspapers, news agencies and online sites to submit entries, 25 organizations have been nominated as finalists.

The winners will be announced at an awards ceremony in Toronto on May 5. Winners will receive cheques for $1,000 and a certificate of award. Other finalists receive citations of merit.

The Journalist of the Year receives $2,500.

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