TORONTO - The Globe and Mail won a leading five awards at the National Newspaper Awards on Friday night and editorial cartoonist Bruce MacKinnon was named journalist of the year, a new prize at the gala.

Six other organizations won two awards apiece: The Canadian Press, the Hamilton Spectator, the Moncton Times & Transcript, the Ottawa Citizen, the Toronto Star and the Vancouver Sun.

The Edmonton Journal, the Halifax Chronicle Herald, the National Post, the Toronto Sun and the Winnipeg Free Press also picked up prizes.

MacKinnon -- of the Halifax Chronicle Herald -- won the Editorial Cartooning category for a portfolio that included an image of a Canadian veteran stepping down from the National War Memorial to claim the fallen body of Cpl. Nathan Cirillo. MacKinnon now has four wins in the category from eight nominations.

The Canadian Press picked up the prize in the breaking news category for its coverage of the shooting on Parliament Hill. The wire service also won in the news feature photo category for Andrew Vaughan’s photo of the funeral procession for three RCMP officers killed in the line of duty in Moncton, N.B.

The prizes for the Globe and Mail came in the categories of: Business (Grant Robertson), International (Mark MacKinnon), Politics (Sean Fine), Long Feature (Patrick White) and Project of the Year (team entry).

The winners in other categories were:

- Sports: The Toronto Star’s Jim Coyle, Steve Russell, Paul Hunter and Jim Rankin for stories that provided an up-close look at two local hockey teams

- Arts and Entertainment: Vinay Menon Toronto Star for a profile of CBC anchor Peter Mansbridge, a look at the Beatles’ 1964 visit to Toronto, and “Jeopardy!” as a pop culture phenomenon

- Beat Reporting: Kim Bolan, Vancouver Sun, for crime coverage

- Column: Pete McMartin, Vancouver Sun for columns on marriage, playing catch, and weddings

- Editorials: Sarah O’Donnell, Edmonton Journal

- Explanatory Work: Kevin Rollason, Winnipeg Free Press, for his study of bed shortages, clogged emergency rooms and the role racism plays in Manitoba hospitals

- Feature Photo: Julie Oliver, Ottawa Citizen, for an image telling the story of a young boy’s struggle with skin disease

- Investigations: Jon Wells, Hamilton Spectator, for “Remorseless,” a look into how a brutal murderer was created, and what led to his implosion and conviction

- Local Reporting: Moncton Times & Transcript team, for coverage of a shooting rampage that left three RCMP officers dead and two wounded

- Long Feature: Patrick White, Globe and Mail, Multimedia Feature: Teri Pecoskie, Hamilton Spectator, for a five-part series uncovering the connections between standardized test scores and a range of social and economic factors

- News Photo: Viktor Pivovarov, Moncton Times & Transcript, for a dramatic image of the shooter in Moncton

- Presentation: National Post team

- Short Feature: Shelley Page, Ottawa Citizen, for a reappraisal of what it was like to be a woman reporting on the Polytechnique massacre

- Sports Photo: Stan Behal, Toronto Sun, for a photo capturing the desperation of a tennis player trying to get the ball over the net

All category winners received cheques for $1,000. Other finalists received citations of merit. The Journalist of the Year is awarded $2,500.

The National Newspaper Awards are open to daily newspapers, news agencies and online news sites approved for entry by the NNA Board of Governors. Seventy-one finalists were nominated in the 22 categories, selected from 1,297 entries published in 2014. Of 63 newspapers and online news sites to submit entries, 24 organizations had nominations in the 66th year of the prestigious awards.

News from © The Canadian Press, 2015