Cabin Radio wins national journalism award for evacuation coverage

Cabin Radio’s coverage of the NWT’s 2023 wildfires and evacuations has received the Canadian Association of Journalists’ national award for daily excellence in reporting.

The award was announced at a ceremony in Toronto on Saturday evening.

Cabin Radio had been shortlisted alongside entries from CBC newsrooms in Montreal, Toronto and Manitoba, and an entry from the Hamilton Spectator.

Former Cabin Radio reporter Caitrin Pilkington’s use of access to information legislation in reporting on the NWT Status of Women Council was also shortlisted for an award.

This is the second successive year in which Cabin Radio has been a finalist for national daily excellence. After six years as an operating newsroom, Saturday’s ceremony marks the first time Cabin Radio has won a major journalism award.

Cabin Radio also delivered the keynote presentation at the association’s two day-conference, held at the Toronto Reference Library, explaining more about how the Yellowknife-based newsroom covered last year’s wildfires and evacuations – and how it is coping with the Meta ban on sharing of news to Facebook, at the same time as its five-year quest for an FM licence continues.

After a 42-month wait, the CRTC initially decided it would not open Cabin Radio’s application before announcing in March it would reconsider, partly as a result of last year’s wildfire season.

Cabin Radio’s coverage of the 2023 wildfires and evacuations involved a 30-day stretch of live text reporting, providing minute-by-minute updates from early morning until evening – sometimes stretching through entire nights – as residents of multiple NWT communities were forced to flee their homes and then endured a lengthy wait to return.

Ollie Williams, Emily Blake and Sarah Pruys led that coverage, which also included answering hundreds of individual queries from residents desperate for information while producing dedicated guides to travel, accommodation and financial resources during the evacuation. 

Reporters Chloe Williams, Megan Miskiman, Aastha Sethi and Simona Rosenfield contributed to all aspects of coverage, including detailed reporting on the realities facing the people involved, from volunteers cooking food for Yellowknife firefighters through to the mental health effects of evacuating and the financial crises that unfolded for some residents. Bill Braden and Hannah Paulson stepped in as freelance support.

Emma Stuart-Kiss worked the final shift of her summer internship from the airlift lineup as Yellowknife evacuated, documenting the wait for a flight to safety before taking one herself. Another intern, Sam Pitre, helped keep Cabin Radio broadcasting (and has since returned in a full-time position). 

General manager Andrew Goodwin stayed in Yellowknife to help with tasks ranging from building fire breaks to keeping essential services running in residents’ absence, while helping Cabin Radio to build video coverage of deserted Yellowknife and efforts to protect the city.

Broadcasters Jesse Wheeler and Scott Letkeman, joined by a variety of Cabin Radio hosts and volunteers, anchored a daily video morning show throughout the evacuation.

“My colleagues gave everything they had to make our coverage reliable, trustworthy and exceptional, while being evacuees themselves,” said Cabin Radio’s editor, Ollie Williams. 

“I will never be more proud to work alongside a group of people.”

Emily Blake, assistant editor, thanked her colleagues and the people of the NWT.

“Many people lost their homes and went through very traumatic experiences,” she said, acknowledging the harm and damage that underpinned the events reported on last summer.

“I hope this is a wake-up call to all media that we really need to pay attention to stories in the North.”

Cabin Radio thanked its audience for supplying accurate and vital information, including photos and video, about things like highway conditions, wildfire locations, evacuation centre logistics and community responses, enabling reporters to pass that on to a wider audience and help keep people safe and informed.

Separately on Saturday, Cabin Radio reported exceeding one million pageviews in a “non-evacuation” month for the first time in its history.

In May this year, Cabin Radio’s online journalism was read 1.1 million times.

August and September last year, when more than two-thirds of the NWT’s population was displaced, were the only months in which that figure has been higher.