Two Acadia Broadcasting employees earned gold and bronze awards for best radio newscast at the 2026 Atlantic Journalism Awards on Saturday.
Assistant News Director and New Brunswick anchor Tara Clow won gold in the category for a newscast on New Brunswick wildfires.
Caitlin Snow, an Assistant News Director and a Nova Scotia anchor, won bronze in the same category for a newscast on Nova Scotia wildfires.
Clow’s winning cast first tackled the reopening of crown lands at 12:01 am on August 26, as wildfires threatened New Brunswick. 2025 had the worst wildfire in many years. Clow lead with this because it affected the most people, who were left on edge due to fires threatening homes and residents.
This was followed by another impactful story, as a house fire in Salisbury just two days earlier left a family homeless. A young boy reported it and helped to save them.
The cast wrapped up with negotiations remaining on hold for Canada Post.
Just three members of the Acadia newsroom contributed to this cast, including the anchor, who wrote, edited and conducted interviews.
The collaboration of those three people helped to bring together an important and informative newscast.
Tara Clow’s cast can be listened to below:
Clow’s cast was selected by a team of judges due to its strong localization and immediacy.
The credited the newscast for centering on a family that escaped and highlighting a child’s role as “family hero,” which brought urgency and humanity to a developing wildfire story.
The judges praised the balance of timely information, including active fire counts and public safety messaging, with meaningful local context through voices form both emergency response and the affected community.
Opening with a development only hours old, the newscast answered the essential question, “what do I need to know right now?”
Overall, the judges found the cast to be a tightly produced and highly effective piece of radio journalism.
Snow’s cast meanwhile focused on the urgency of the wildfires in Nova Scotia’s Annapolis County last summer that forced hundreds from their homes during an unprecedented drought.
It ended with what could have been a massive strike by Air Canada flight attendant’s hours before they were set to walk off the job and how that would affect local passengers.
You can listen to Caitlin Snow’s cast here:
