The peer-reviewed quarterly journal of the American Journalism Historians Association has awarded its 2018 “Article of the Year” prize to Dr. Tom Mascaro of Bowling Green State University.

American Journalism’s editors selected Mascaro’s “The Blood of Others: Television Documentary Journalism as Literary Engagement” as the best article to have been submitted to the journal over the last year.

“I was particularly pleased to have had this article accepted by American Journalism, because it takes documentary scholarship in a new direction,” Mascaro said, “but to have it selected as the Best Article by people I truly admire far exceeded my expectations. I am genuinely honored and thrilled.”

In his article, Mascaro argues that documentary journalists have been too narrowly defined as strictly journalists.

Mascaro posits documentarians, like their counterparts in literature, intimately engage with and immerse themselves in the topics they research, which warrants examining documentaries as both acts of journalism and engaged literature.

Mascaro will be recognized for his work at the upcoming AJHA National Convention, Oct. 4-6 in Salt Lake City.