TORONTO – Here’s a first: The winner of the $1,000 Rolf Lockwood Scholarship won the same prize last year.

And nobody pulled a fast one.

Turns out the annual $1,000 prize goes to the second-, third- or fourth-year student who produces the best business-magazine story; and Cormac McGee, now in his final year of Ryerson University’s Journalism program, wowed the judges with his writing style and ingenuity two years in a row.
Small wonder.

Here’s how he started off the second story:

“I’m caught off guard by the noise suddenly coming out of my computer: that familiar yet irritating sound of someone phoning you on Skype.

‘Doo dee doo, dee doo deeee.'”

The man knows how to write a lead.

Now in its 11th year, the Lockwood award goes to a Ryerson j-school undergrad with a minimum grade-point average of 3.0 for writing the best example of a magazine article focusing on business journalism.

The award was established by Jim Glionna, founding partner and president of Newcom after the company’s founding editor Rolf Lockwood was presented with the Harvey S. Southam Lifetime Achievement Award by the Canadian Business Press in 2003.

The first time McGee won was for a story he wrote about a mobile app business startup.

Second time around, he wrote about how competition among high-tech start-ups in England is so fierce that entrepreneurs are migrating to Dublin.

He located the story in England because he was located on that side of the planet for six months, on a university exchange. He completed a Ryerson semester at a school in Utrecht, Holland.

Today’s Trucking‘s Editor Peter Carter attended the Journalism School’s annual awards ceremony to present the prize on behalf of Newcom.

“I’m always proud to boast that I work for a company that cares so much about Canadian education,” Carter said.

McGee also won another writing prize this year: The Floyd Chalmers Prize for Excellence in Business Journalism. That one goes to the student producing the best example of business journalism. The distinction between the Lockwood Award and the Chalmers prize-the former is strictly for magazine writing.

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