The annual Covert Award in Mass Communication History has been won by Andie Tucher, a Columbia Journalism School professor who directs its Communications Ph.D. program. Tucher won the 34th annual award for “‘I believe in faking’: The Dilemma of Photographic Realism at the Dawn of Photojournalism,” Photography & Culture, 10:2 (June 2017), 1-20.
The piece was selected from 8 articles nominated. The judges commended Tucher for her “spectacular” scholarship on an important topic, supported by “deep research and original analysis.”
The award, endowed by the late Catherine Covert, a professor of public communications at Syracuse University and former head of the AEJMC History Division, goes to the article or chapter in an edited collection that represents the year's best essay in mass communication history. It is presented by AEJMC's History Division.
The Covert Committee includes some long-time members, among them Covert’s colleagues, as well as the current and past heads of the History Division. Committee members this year were: Douglas Cumming, Washington and Lee University; Kathy Roberts Forde, University of Massachusetts; Richard Kielbowicz, University of Washington; and Nancy Roberts, Chair, State University of New York at Albany.
The History Division will present the $500 award to Tucher at its Members' Meeting at the annual AEJMC convention in August, this year in Washington, D.C.
