Dr. Krystal Akehinmi’s (Tennessee Tech University) article, “‘To Make Pen-Friends through the Medium of Your Journal’: The Role of the Chicago Defender’s Bud Billiken Club in Forging Foreign Reporting and a Transnational Cohort among 1930s Black Youth,” published in 2025 in Volume 52, Issue 2 of Journalism History, has been selected as the 2026 winner of the Michael S. Sweeney Award, an annual celebration of the best article published in the journal.

We are very happy to celebrate this article. Judges noted that:

This article excavates an important, yet easily overlooked role of the Black Press, namely, the broader internationalization of the Black Press and the intentionality with which key figures sought to develop a cosmopolitan, internationalist perspective among readership. By focusing on children’s journalism, this research further shows the active role newspapers have long played in cultivating visions of citizenship, and the attention to letters and correspondence demonstrates how readers’ global perspective grew in unexpected ways. The methodology is novel; the analysis is sharp and theoretically subtle in ways that are simply a pleasure to read.

A plaque celebrating this article will be presented at the annual AEJMC conference, held August 5-8 in New Orleans, Louisiana. The annual History Division awards gala will be an offsite social held Thursday, August 6, from 7:45 p.m. to 9:30 p.m.

In 2018 the History Division created the Sweeney award to honor Michael S. Sweeney. He 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.

Journalism History is the oldest peer-reviewed journal of mass media history in the United States. Please see https://journalism-history.org for more information about the journal.