Winners: SEJ 15th Annual Awards for Reporting on the Environment by The Society of Environmental Journalists, September 2016
The Society of Environmental Journalists is proud to present the winners of the 2015-2016 Awards for Reporting on the Environment. SEJ’s journalism contest is the world’s largest and most comprehensive awards for journalism on environmental topics.
SEJ honors this year’s winners Fri., Sept. 23, at a celebratory luncheon in Sacramento, California, in conjunction with SEJ’s 26th Annual Conference.
SEJ’s 2016 Awards for Reporting on the Environment are…
Kevin Carmody Award for Outstanding In-depth Reporting, Large Market
Kevin Carmody Award for Outstanding In-depth Reporting, Small Market
Outstanding Beat Reporting, Large Market
Outstanding Beat Reporting, Small Market
Outstanding Feature Story
Outstanding Explanatory Reporting
Rachel Carson Environment Book Award
…
Honorable Mention
“Slick Water: Fracking and One Insider’s Stand Against the World’s Most Powerful Industry” by Andrew Nikiforuk
Published by Greystone Books
Supplemental materials: “Fracking Regulation on Trial in Andrew Nikiforuk’s ‘Slick Water’,” TheTyee.ca, November 16, 2015 by Robyn Smith.
Judges’ comments: Hard-nosed, gutty investigative journalism by a real pro. Canadian journalist Andrew Nikiforuk, who became the first Canadian to win SEJ’s Rachel Carson Environment Book Award when he took home top honors in 2009 for “Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent,” delivers another book that has a beautifully written narrative and fiercely determined voice. “Slick Water” follows a seven-year saga of Alberta-based biologist Jessica Ernst, a longtime oil patch consultant who fought the powers that be to hold government and industry accountable for destroying the environment with fracking processes. It’s an inspirational tale of someone who stood up for the environment in the face of extreme adversity, or — as one judge put it, a “story of the women in the fracking horror show.” Nikiforuk connects dots from coast to coast in the United States and Canada, making a bold case for this claim: “Men do not understand the courage of ordinary women.”
SEJ’s 2016 Distinguished Judges
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Dedication by Rachel Carson in her 1962 book, Silent Spring:
To Alberta Schweitzer
who said
“Man has lost the capacity to foresee
and to forestall. He will end by
destroying the earth.”
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From a review of Silent Spring by The Boston Globe: “The thing to remember … is that the author is not an alarmist but a trained, meticulously scrupulous scientist, who shuns publicity and controversy but whose findings were too catastrophic to keep to herself.”
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Snap taken September 13, 2016
[Refer also to:
Andrew Nikiforuk wins USA National Science in Society Award for Slick Water. “NASW’s Science in Society Journalism Awards honor and encourage outstanding investigative and interpretive reporting about the sciences and their impact for good and ill.” Winners announced September 12, 2016
Andrew Nikiforuk’s Slick Water Finalist for Lane Anderson Awards, Best Canadian science books written in 2015 Winners to be announced September 30, 2016; announced October 4, 2016: Adult category winner: Alanna Mitchell for Malignant Metaphor, on confronting cancer myths.
Alberta Literary Award Winner: Andrew Nikiforuk’s Slick Water wins Wilfred Eggleston Award for Nonfiction Announced June 4, 2016
Andrew Nikiforuk for Slick Water among finalists for 2016 Shaughnessy Cohen Prize “awarded to a book of literary non-fiction on a political subject of relevance to Canadians” John Ibbitson won for his book Stephen Harper, announced April 20, 2016 ]