The Ontario Community Newspapers Association has unveiled its long list of the 2024 finalists and Humber is one of many nominees.
In the category of general excellence awards for colleges and universities, the Humber Et Cetera sits in class four, along with Fanshawe College’s Interrobang, the University of Waterloo’s Imprint and an honourable mention of Loyalist’s Pioneer.
For student feature writing, Humber journalists Annicca Albano and Jeferson Quiros-Vargas are cited for their story on an Allan Gardens encampment.
“Getting an award is wonderful, but moving the needle is the true win,” Albano said.
"I am grateful to OCNA for recognizing our Humber News piece on the lack of support for displaced Torontonians and to everyone who trusted us to tell their stories,” she said.
Albano said the people affected feel abandoned by the government and society, so bringing attention to their struggles is a responsibility for her as a journalist.
“I hope this sparks much-needed empathy,” she said.
“I couldn't have asked for a better partner than Jeferson, who helped me cover and navigate trauma,” Albano said.
She also thanks her professors, Genelle Levy and Rob Lamberti, for their support.
“It's great to see so much Humber representation,” Albano said.
“It's a privilege to share a platform where we could tell social justice and climate stories informed by our lived experiences,” she said.
Quiros-Vargas said the nomination was surprising to him, but he nevertheless feels honoured their story was nominated.
“I'd say it took around maybe like a month and a half, two months,” Quiros-Vargas said when asked how long the story took to complete.
“There wasn't like a fully like we're gonna start on the story this day, you know, and Annicca and I, we kind of merged later on to do the story together,” he said.
Quiros-Vargas said their collaboration was a coincidence.
“I was planning on doing a story on encampments and home insecurity and Annicca was also doing a story about it, and so we kind of just ended up like teaming up,” he said.
Quiros-Vargas thinks those types of stories are important.
“I definitely think like stories involving unhoused people and the housing crisis, cost of living, those are realities that always affect at least a specific group of people,” he said.
Humber’s Carlo Cantisani is a finalist in the same category for his climate change story on Toronto not meeting the net zero targets.
“I was very surprised because I didn't know that my story was a finalist for the award,” he said.
Cantisani said the story was the first one he’s ever written for Humber News, now Humber Et Cetera.
“I started writing it before starting my second year. So I had the idea to work on that article, probably around early 2023,” he said.
“I worked through it until May, but there was the summer break, so no classes for all the summer,” Cantisani said.
He said he remembered pitching the story to Lamberti, which led to the story eventually being published.
“An article like that about climate change and Toronto, you need to be very, very, very precise on the information you are reporting,” Cantisani said.
He said there needs to be precision in the numbers, percentages and associations.
“It actually was the first time for me approaching the issue, so it was good to learn how to approach a big issue like how Toronto is fighting climate change,” Cantisani said.
Lara King, program coordinator for the Journalism Advanced Diploma program at Humber Polytechnic, said she is excited about the nominations.
“It's been a really good year for Humber journalism,” she said.
“We were nominated for Crown earlier this year with Columbia, and now to have our newspaper recognized in so many categories like General Excellence alongside Fanshawe, Waterloo and Loyalist is really cool,” King said.
She said it’s a “great experience” to be in the Humber newsroom.
“I think we're pretty intentional about trying to include all years in different projects in the newsroom,” King said.
“I think that our students really get an opportunity to cover areas that they've learned about while they were here, stories that they're passionate about and sometimes social justice stories that they really want to make sure get covered,” she said.
King thinks the nominations show Humber journalism students are ready for the field.
“They get best practices that they learn in first year,” she said. “By second year, they're doing a lot, and to be able to show as nominees is pretty amazing.”
The Best College/University Newspaper Website finalists are Centennial College with torontoobserver.ca, Humber Polytechnic with humbernews.ca (now humberetc.ca), and the University of Waterloo’s uwimprint.ca.
For the category of student news writing, sponsored by the Ontario Journalism Educators Association, Humber’s Antonio Canyameras Rojas is a finalist with his story on Humber’s cross-country team. Christian Zdravko from Centennial College and Nadia Khan from the University of Waterloo are in that category with Mauricio Prado from Fanshawe College as an honourable mention.
For student editorial writing, Humber’s Santiago Helou Quintero is a finalist with his piece about the strained social contract in Canada. Arty Sarkisian and Naomie Twagirumukiza from Algonquin College are also finalists in the category.
