The Michael S. Sweeney Award recognizes the most outstanding article published in the previous volume of the Journalism History journal.

The History Division created the award in 2018 to honor Michael S. Sweeney, who served as editor of Journalism History from 2012 to 2018 and worked to ensure its future by initiating the transition from an independent publication to the official scholarly publication of the History Division.

The finalists are selected by the editor of Journalism History, with the winner determined each spring by the division’s Publications Committee. The winner receives a $200 cash prize.

Current recipient
2023 Paul Myers & Lisa Mullikin Parcell, “Beauty and the Bran: Kellogg’s Campaign to ‘Correct Faulty Elimination’ and Conquer the Cereal Industry,” Journalism History 48:4 (2022), 324-348, DOI: 10.1080/00947679.2022.2125775

Past Recipients
2022 Elisabeth Fondren, “The Mirror with a Memory”: The Great War through the Lens of Percy Brown, British Correspondent and Photojournalist (1914-1920).”

2021 Wendy Melillo, “Democracy’s Adventure Hero on a New Frontier: Bridging Language in the Ad Council’s Peace Corps Campaign, 1961-1970.”

2020 Ronald Zboray and Mary Saracino Zboray, “Recovering Disabled Veterans in Civil War Newspapers: Creating Heroic Disability.”

2019 Teri Finneman, ‘The Greatest of Its Kind Ever Witnessed in America’: The Press and the 1913 Women’s March on Washington.”

2018 Dale Cressman, “News in Light: The Times Square Zipper and Newspaper Signs in an Age of Technological Enthusiasm.”