Recruiting Young Minds to Truck Writing

A 20-year-old son of Irish immigrants with the gunslinger-style handle Cormac McGee is this year’s recipient of the annual Rolf Lockwood Scholarship.

The Rolf Lockwood award is a $1,000 bursary given to a Ryerson undergrad with a minimum grade-point average of 3.0 for writing the best example of a magazine article focusing on business journalism.

“I could be wrong on this, but I believe McGee’s the first male to win the prize,” says Peter Carter, editor of Today’s Trucking magazine, who presented McGee with his prize while overlooking the ice surface of the old Maple Leaf Gardens. 

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

McGee won with a story he wrote in his second year, about a business start-up about mobile applications, or apps.

Here’s the opening paragraph:

 “Hunched over a wooden table in his girlfriend’s cramped High Park apartment, Graeme Davis mashes his MacBook keyboard frantically. To his left is the living room, which is no more than a bright red couch and small television. To his right is the kitchen, where a half empty bottle of vodka sits beside a stack of dirty bowls.”

“I’m always very proud to represent Newcom at this annual occasion. The Lockwood Scholarship is one of about 30 journalism-school awards handed out annually, most of them named for Canadian journalistic luminaries such as John Honderich, Albert Wadham, Len Coates and Paul Rimstead,” Carter says.

The presentation took place at the annual Ryerson School of Journalism’s Awards Ceremony. This year, the luncheon was held on the fourth floor of the old Maple Leaf Gardens, overlooking the ice surface, where Carter and McGee talked about trucking, journalism and the marrying of the two.

McGee says he’s interested in business journalism-and after speaking with Carter- that he’ll “definitely be looking up the Truck Writers of North America (TWNA) internship.”