Taproot Survey earns nod from National Newspaper Awards

Taproot’s effort to help voters make an informed decision in the 2025 municipal election is a finalist for a National Newspaper Award in the Innovation in Journalism category.

The Taproot Survey, a big part of our election coverage, earned Taproot recognition for the first time from these awards celebrating excellence in Canadian journalism. We’re so proud to see our team’s hard work honoured in this way!

Taproot is the only Edmonton media outlet to be named a finalist for this year’s NNAs; the only other Edmonton-based nominee is Jana Pruden of The Globe and Mail, who is nominated for sports reporting. As you might expect from the name of the awards, Canada’s biggest newspapers figure heavily among the finalists, but it’s great to see the program recognize smaller and digital-only publications like ours as well. Our fellow first-timers include The Green Line and Village Media’s Sudbury.com for local reporting and The Tyee for arts and entertainment coverage.

This is the first time the NNAs have included a category for innovation in journalism. The other finalists are a team from Canada’s National Observer for Civic Searchlight, which makes it possible to search transcripts of municipal meetings, and a team from the Toronto Star for an automated natural-language search engine to provide real-time data for all of the ridings in the 2025 federal election. We’ll learn who wins on April 24.

We don’t do this work for awards — truly, the greatest reward was helping 27,000+ people see how they aligned with the candidates for mayor and council on the issues that mattered most to them. But it is welcome validation for the quality of the work the Taproot team produced, and a great indication that those who have helped us along the way have made a wise investment.

And so, I hope those who support Taproot feel as happy as we do today. Without you, we would not be able to do such work! If you would like to help us do more, refer a friend, buy a membership, or consider sponsorship or advertising, depending on your circumstances. Every little bit has brought us to where we are.