Jack Webster Foundation Announces 2019 Bruce Hutchison Lifetime Achievement and Bill Good Award Recipients

VANCOUVER, Sept. 24, 2019 /CNW/ - Western Canada's preeminent journalism awards today announced that Fabian Dawson is the 2019 Bruce Hutchison Lifetime Achievement Award recipient and Megaphone is the 2019 Bill Good Award recipient.  The awards will be handed out at the November 7^th Jack Webster Awards dinner to be held at the Hyatt Regency, Vancouver.

Fabian Dawson
Jack Webster Foundation 2019 Bruce Hutchison Lifetime Achievement Award Recipient

Journalist Fabian Dawson's career has spanned more than four decades in British Columbia and Asia and has had a major impact both in Canada and abroad. Born and raised in Malaysia, Fabian immigrated to Canada, arriving in Vancouver in 1988. He became deputy editor-in-chief of The Province newspaper in Vancouver and was also editor of Vancouverdesi.com, then Canada's largest South Asian news portal. Fabian serves as the editorial advisor to the Vancouver-based South Asian Post, Asian Pacific Post and Filipino Post newspapers as well the Market One Media Group and several publications in Korea, Hong Kong, Malaysia, India, Singapore, Philippines and England.

Fabian's work, particularly in India, has led to the creation of four documentary films and a made-for-TV movie. In 2004, The Canadian National Newspaper Awards Board of Governors named Fabian as the recipient of 2004 Unsung Hero of Canadian Journalism. In 2006, an investigative team led by Fabian won the Daniel Pearl Award for an investigative series, Abandoned Brides: Canada's Shame, India's Sorrow. Fabian is also a recipient of the Queen's Jubilee Medal and was honoured by the Vancouver-based Darpan Magazine and the Chetna Association of Canada for his work within the South Asian media.

See more about Fabian and hear from him at the Thursday, November 7^th, Jack Webster Awards.

Megaphone
Jack Webster Foundation 2019 Bill Good Award Recipient

The Bill Good Award honours a B.C. individual or organization that makes significant contributions to the province's journalism community or to a community's enrichment via journalism, and this year's recipient has done this in spades.

For more than 10 years Megaphone Magazine has been making marginalized voices heard and putting much needed funds into the pockets of low income and homeless vendors.

The vendors sell the monthly magazine on the streets of Vancouver and Victoria, buying each magazine for 75 cents and selling it to customers for $2. The $1.25 profit goes into their pockets, providing a flexible source of income for people who face barriers to traditional employment - barriers that range from homelessness, to physical and mental health challenges, to addiction. In addition, Megaphone's Hope in Shadows calendar showcases the photography of Megaphone vendors who use single-use disposable cameras to capture images in their communities. The vendors buy the calendars for $10 and sell them for $20. Every year, some 150 Megaphone vendors earn income and experience a more intangible benefit - the pride that comes with taking a role in sharing their communities' stories. Megaphone brings together professional journalists with storytellers in the community who explore issues of social justice, culture, politics and independent arts - in stories shared directly by people who are experiencing poverty and homelessness and in reporting by journalists who give voice to marginalized people in the community who might otherwise never be heard.

Find out more about Megaphone's vast contributions to many community's enrichment via journalism at the November 7^th Jack Webster Awards.

Also, at the awards dinner, those in attendance will hear from the featured guest, Nahlah Ayed, host/producer of CBC – Ideas and a veteran foreign reporter who will be featured in an armchair chat.

Tickets are available to attend the 2019 Webster Awards. They are $195 each or $1,950 for a table for 10. More information about tickets is available at www.jackwebster.com/dinnertickets where they can also be purchased by credit card, online.

This year's Jack Webster Awards are made possible by: BCGEU, BCIT, Capital Direct, Coast Capital Savings, FortisBC, Global Container Terminals Inc., Greater Vancouver Board of Trade, Langara, LNG Canada, Lyft, Port of Vancouver, UDI, and Unifor, with Hyphen as the Film Partner, Jelly Marketing & PR as the Communication Partner and Rocky Mountaineer as the Raffle Prize Partner. Cision is the exclusive distribution partner of the Jack Webster Foundation.

The Jack Webster Foundation was founded in 1986 and named after the man who was Western Canada's best-known and most influential reporter. He left his mark on the B.C. journalism scene with his hard-hitting reporting style. In his more than 40 years of print, radio and television journalism, Jack Webster was synonymous with insightful, accurate and unabashed reporting. Today the Jack Webster Foundation carries on Jack's legacy by fostering excellence in journalism to protect the public interest for British Columbians by: holding the annual Jack Webster Awards for excellence in journalism in B.C., awarding annual Student Awards to aboriginal and senior journalism students, awarding Professional Development Fellowships to working journalists, and providing educational seminars for the media.

www.jackwebster.com

SOURCE Jack Webster Foundation