The History Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) has selected John Maxwell Hamilton as the winner of its Book Award honoring the best journalism and mass communication history book published in 2020. The author of Manipulating the Masses: Woodrow Wilson and the Birth of American Propaganda (LSU Press), Hamilton is the Hopkins P. Breazeale Professor of Journalism at Louisiana State University’s Manship School of Mass Communication. He’s also a Global Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and a Senior Associate at the Center for Strategic & International Studies, both in Washington, D.C. Hamilton worked as a journalist for the Milwaukee Journal, Christian Science Monitor, and ABC Radio before entering academia. At LSU, Hamilton was the founding dean of the Manship School and also served as executive vice chancellor and provost. He has a Ph.D. in American Civilization from George Washington University.   

The committee is also recognizing two runners-up for this year’s Book Award. Craig Allen, author of Univision, Telemundo, and the Rise of Spanish Language Television in the United States (University Press of Florida), is an associate professor at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University and associate dean of the Barrett Honors College at the Downtown Phoenix campus. He earned his Ph.D. at Ohio University. Stephen Bates, an associate professor in the Greenspun School of Journalism and Media Studies at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, is the author of An Aristocracy of Critics: Luce, Hutchins, Niebuhr, and the Committee that Redefined Freedom of the Press (Yale University Press). Bates holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School. 

A panel of three distinguished media historians chose Manipulating the Masses from a strong field of entries. The judges described Hamilton’s book as “a magisterial work, comprehensive and highly readable” and a “meticulously researched contribution to communication history.”  

Manipulating the Masses offers a deep examination of the Creel Committee’s impact on public attitudes about information and propaganda. The judges believed the book is particularly strong in its examination of the role of journalists in both the work of the Committee and creation of the information state. They noted that Hamilton presents his impressive archival research “in an engaging and insightful historical narrative.” According to one of the judges, “Its critical analysis of the information eco-system back then could not be timelier, given the torrent of disinformation we confront today.”

Allen’s Univision, Telemundo, and the Rise of Spanish Language Television in the United States fills a notable gap in media history by detailing the rise and innovations of Spanish-language television through extensive use of interviews and archival sources. Not only does the work bring to light new information, but it rightly calls out previous histories of broadcasting that have focused on the “Big Three” networks to the exclusion of ethnic and local programming. One judge commented, “Allen’s book fills an enormous hole in media history, and his dogged pursuit of interviews with the pioneers who built Spanish-language TV in the United States has created a valuable new archive of primary sources that should help future historians build on his seminal work.”

In an Aristocracy of Critics, Bates draws us into the intellectual debates that informed the work of the Hutchins Commission. Through diligent archival research, Bates shows us how the Commission grappled with fundamental questions about the role and duties of the media. The judges think this book “makes a strong contribution to our understanding of the Commission’s influence on U.S. media after World War II” and offers a “valuable reinterpretation of an event we thought we knew so well.” The book is also “beautifully written and well argued.” 

Hamilton will receive a plaque and cash prize. All three honorees will be recognized during the division’s awards gala at the AEJMC National Convention, which will be held virtually this year, and featured in future episodes of the Journalism History podcast.