Awards

Sidney Kobre Award for Lifetime Achievement

AJHA's highest honor, the Kobre Award, recognizes individuals with an exemplary record of sustained achievement in journalism history through teaching, research, professional activities, or other contributions to the field of journalism history.

This year's honoree is W. Joseph Campbell.

Campbell is a professor emeritus of communication at American University in Washington, D.C., from where he recently retired after 26 years on the tenure-line faculty. Read more about his accomplishments here. 

He will be recognized during the Awards Lunch at the AJHA conference. 

AJHA Book of the Year Award 

AJHA's Book of the Year Award recognizes the best book in journalism history or mass media history published during the previous calendar year.

This year's winner is Aniko Bodroghkozy, for "Making #Charlottesville: Media from Civil Rights to Unite the Right." 

Bodroghkozy’s book explores the resurgence of white supremacy amid the 2017 “Summer of Hate” in Charlottesville, Virginia, by comparing that highly visible event to key moments in the civil rights era. 

Three authors earned honorable mention for their books:

• Katherine Rye Jewell, “ Live from the Underground: A History of College Radio"
• Josh Shepperd, “Shadow of the New Deal: The Victory of Public Broadcasting"
• Ken Ward, "Last Paper Standing: A Century of Competition Between the Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News"

The award will be presented during the book award panel. Read the news release.

Margaret A. Blanchard Dissertation Prize

Since 1997, AJHA has presented the Blanchard Prize for the best doctoral dissertation dealing with mass communication history completed during the prior calendar year.

This year's winner is Christopher Schaefer, a postgraduate affiliate at the University of Cambridge now working for the German Marshall Fund of the United States, who won for his dissertation “Covering the World with the International Herald Tribune.” 

The committee named three honorable mentions: Anna E. Lindner, Karen D. Russell, and Carey Kelley. Honorees will discuss their work in a special conference session.

Read the news release.

American Journalism Rising Scholar Award

Editors of AJHA's quarterly academic journal American Journalism present the Rising Scholar Award at the annual General Business Meeting to recognize the achievements and potential of an untenured scholar who shows promise in extending her or his research agenda. 

This year's winner is Bailey Dick, an assistant professor at Bowling Green State University. 

Dick receives this honor and $2,000 award in recognition of her multi-century research of first-person journalism about sexual violence. Her work reveals “the thread that weaves together the stories of many of media history’s most studied women–Ida B. Wells, stunt girls, sob sisters, war correspondents, the revolting ‘good girls’ of Newsweek, advice columnists like Ann Landers and Dear Abby–was their writing about sexual violence.” She writes that “survivors of sexual violence have been disclosing their experiences with sexual violence in the media for centuries,” long before the #MeToo social media discourse in 2017. Read more about her research in the press release. 

Best American Journalism Article

The Best Article Award honors research published in American Journalism within the last year that is original, rigorous, and makes an outstanding contribution to developing scholarship in the field of journalism and mass communication history.

This year's winners are co-authors Melissa Greene-Blye and John Bickers for their article, “War Chief, Friend of the President, Prohibitionist: Would the ‘Real’ Little Turtle Please Stand Up?” published in Vol. 40, No. 3.

Greene-Blye is an assistant professor in the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communication and affiliate faculty in Indigenous Studies at the University of Kansas, and a citizen of the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma. Bickers is the Jesse Hauk Shera assistant professor at Case Western Reserve and a citizen of the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma. Read more about their work here. 

The editors of American Journalism will present the award during the annual General Business Meeting.

Inaugural Hazel Dicken-Garcia Research Grant

The Hazel Dicken-Garcia Research Grant provides $1,000 grants for researchers who share the scholarly interests of Dicken-Garcia. 

This year's winner is Ashley Walter, an assistant professor in the Department of Communication at St. Louis University. The grant will support Walter’s travel to conduct research in Associated Press and Time, Inc. archives in New York City in support of a forthcoming book project on lawsuits filed by women working at print news organizations following the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Walter’s book aims to uncover the stories of these women–which were un- or under-reported in the mainstream press– and follow the entire history of the suits and their long-term impact. Read more about her work and the award here. 

Joseph McKerns Research Grants

Joseph McKerns Research Grants provide funding of up to $1,250 per person for media history research projects while recognizing and rewarding the winners. 

The 2024 winners are Dianne Bragg of the University of Alabama, Debra van Tuyll of Augusta University (emerita), and Ashley Walter of St. Louis University.  Read more about their research here. 

Research Paper Awards

During the general business meeting, the AJHA will give out the following research awards for top papers at the Columbus convention.

• John P. Ferré of the University of Louisville won the Wm. David Sloan Award for Outstanding Faculty Paper for “Soft News, Commercialism, and Faith: Religion in Pathé and Paramount Newsreels, 1920-1957.” Honorable mention: Brian Creech (Lehigh University) and Amber Roessner (University of Tennessee-Knoxville) (co-authors).
• Alexia Little of the University of Georgia won the Robert Lance Memorial Award for Outstanding Student Paper for “The Reality of a Pseudo-Event: Gone with the Wind Premiere, 1939.” Honorable mention: Eduardo Morales (University of Georgia).
• The Maurine Beasley Award for Outstanding Paper on Women’s History went to Eduardo Morales of the University of Georgia for “The Awful and Impressive Example: Wife Beaters and the Whipping Post in American Newspapers, 1904-1906.” Honorable mention: Karlin Andersen Tuttle (Pennsylvania State University).
• Paul A. Anthony of Florida State University received the J. William Snorgrass Award for Outstanding Paper on Minority Journalism History for “White Press, Black Church: Colorblind Rhetoric, Alternative Media, and the 1968 Summer of Crisis in Churches of Christ.” Honorable mention: Darren Chan (Temple University).
• The Jean Palmegiano Award for Outstanding International/Transnational Journalism Research went to Gilad Halpern of the University of Haifa for “The Journalistic Creed Upon Decolonization: The Case of The Palestine Post.” Honorable mention: Craig Allen (Arizona State University).
• Willie R. Tubbs of the University of West Florida won the Wally Eberhard Award for Outstanding Paper on Media and War for “Missed Opportunities: Military Publications, Public Information, and the Vietnam-Era Service of Bob Kalsu and Rocky Bleier.” Honorable mention: Madeleine Liseblad (California State University, Long Beach).

President's Awards 

President Tracy Lucht recognized new research chair Jennifer Moore, of University of Minnesota, Duluth, and new convention sites manager Aimee Edmondson, of Ohio University, for their service in the last year. She also recognized outgoing board members, Erin Coyle, Matthew Pressman, and Yong Volz, and the outgoing editor of American Journalism, Pamela Walck, alongside other outgoing committee members.