The Geoffrey Stevens Awards for Reporting Excellence

As news organizations undergo a seemingly endless series of changes and challenges, impactful, fact-based reporting continues to be the essential backbone of journalism across the country.  Despite these challenges, Geoffrey believed that journalism needs continuing support as the best days of journalism still lie ahead.

To that end, the Stevens family and a group of Geoffrey’s friends have established the Geoffrey Stevens Awards for Reporting Excellence.

The Geoffrey Stevens Awards will encourage journalists to pursue in-depth reporting on a subject, issue or community of their choice in telling stories that can change the lives of Canadians. 

The inaugural Geoffrey Stevens Award will be at the 2025 National Newspaper Awards. Subsequently, two separate awards will be presented annually—at the NNA gala and at the annual Canadian Association of Journalists conference.

The awards celebrate Geoffrey Stevens’ more than six decades of political reporting and commentary, known for quality, fact-based journalism that played an essential role in Canada’s democracy.

That began when he was initially hired by the Globe and Mail in 1962. Originally reporting from Toronto city hall, he was assigned to the Globe’s Ottawa bureau in 1965. In 1973 he was named the Globe’s national political columnist, a role he continued until 1981. Returning to Toronto, he spent two years as the Globe’s Sports Editor and National Editor before being named its Managing Editor in 1983, during which time he was responsible for appointing the Globe’s first female foreign correspondent.

After leaving the Globe in 1989, he served as managing editor of Macleans magazine from 1996 until 2001. Until his death in 2023 at the age of 83,  he had been writing a weekly political column for The Record in Waterloo, the Spectator in Hamilton and other Torstar publications.

He also taught political science at Wilfrid Laurier University, which recognized his “lifelong contribution to political reporting and public discourse across Canada” with an Honorary Doctor of Letters degree.

Geoffrey Stevens is the author of six books about Canadian politics, the most recent being Flora – A Woman in a Man’s World – an autobiography written with Flora MacDonald and published in 2021.