Julia-Simone Rutgers

Julia-Simone Rutgers is The Narwhal’s Manitoba reporter, part of a partnership with the Winnipeg Free Press. She covers topics ranging from energy and mining to municipal issues. She has worked on investigations into Winnipeg’s 2025 public transit overhaul and its sewage infrastructure. Outside of Winnipeg, Julia-Simone has reported in depth on the impacts of Manitoba Hydro, Indigenous-led conservation plans and issues affecting rural Manitobans.

She was the recipient of the 2023 Hon. Edward Goff Penny Memorial Prize for Young Canadian Journalists and in 2022, was a finalist in the 2022 National Newspaper Award’s Special Topic: Indigenous Issues-Climate Change category. She has also been recognized in the Canadian Association of Journalists awards, Digital Publishing Awards and Society of Environmental Journalists awards.

In 2025, Rutgers completed the LEDE program certification of computational competency through Columbia University’s graduate school of journalism; she strives to include data-driven analysis, graphics and maps in as many stories as she can. Prior to joining The Narwhal, Rutgers was a daily reporter for the Winnipeg Free Press. She has also written for the now-defunct Star Metro Halifax, the Coast, the Discourse and The Globe and Mail. In 2022, she was the first writer-in-residence at The Walrus, where she produced long features about social housing and policing in Winnipeg. Her role is made possible thanks to funding from The Winnipeg Foundation, which has no editorial input into her work.