The History Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) congratulates Dr. L. Amber Roessner of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, winner of the 37th annual Covert Award for best mass communication history article, essay, or book chapter published in 2020.
The award memorializes Dr. Catherine L. Covert, professor of journalism at Syracuse University. Dr. Covert, who died in 1983, was the first woman professor in Syracuse’s Newhouse School of Journalism and the first woman to head the AEJMC History Division, in 1975. The award has been presented annually since 1985 (see https://aejmc.us/history/about/covert-award/)
Journalism History published Dr. Roessner’s article, “The Voices of Public Opinion: Lingering Structures of Feeling about Women’s Suffrage in 1917 U.S. Newspaper Letters to the Editor,” in volume 46, no. 2, 2020 (https://doi.org/10.1080/00947679.2020.1724588).
“Anyone who knows me recognizes that I am not often at a loss for words,” Roessner said upon learning the news, “but in this moment, I am silent with humility. Over the years, the Covert Award has been bestowed upon some of the most prominent thinkers in our field, including two of my mentors, Janice Hume and Kathy Roberts Forde. I am honestly humbled beyond belief to be mentioned in the same breath with them. Moreover, I hope more than anything to live up to the legacy of Dr. Catherine L. Covert and the past winners of this award, who have had an enduring influence through their scholarship, their pedagogy, and their mentorship.”
Dr. Thomas A. Mascaro, the Covert Award Chair, said: “Dr. Roessner’s article expands the scholarship on letters to the editor by examining historical artifacts in service to understanding an era’s public sentiments and journalistic practices. She places readers in the times and minds of advocates for women’s suffrage at a crucial moment in 20th century history.”
“The Voices of Public Opinion” outranked a large, highly competitive field of entries analyzed, grouped, and ranked by the Covert Award judges. Mascaro, who liaised with submitters and judges, added: “The literature of media history has been greatly expanded and elevated by the body of this year’s exceptional entries. The division owes a debt of thanks to the efforts of judges working in difficult times.”
The History Division will honor Dr. Roessner and present a check for $200 at the annual AEJMC convention in August 2021. The abstract for Dr. Roessner’s article follows:
Abstract: Answering continued calls for a cultural approach to the study of women’s history, this article explores what social historian Raymond Williams referred to as lingering traces of “structures of feeling” about women’s suffrage in letters published in the U.S. commercial periodical press. Through a discourse analysis of 225 letters to the editor published in five prominent U.S. newspapers, alongside other relevant primary and secondary sources, this study offers insight into the production of letters to the editor as an act of strategic communication by suffragists and anti-suffragists, the regulation of letters to the editor by news gatekeepers and agenda-setters, and the consumption of letters to the editor by newspaper readers in 1917, a pivotal year in the decades-long cultural struggle over women’s suffrage. This article contends that these contested editorial spaces were important strategic sites where the negotiation of common-sense logics that continue to inform our present-day discourse unfolded.
For additional references on Dr. Covert, see:
https://surface.syr.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1063&context=sumagazine