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
2026 Krystal Akehinmi, “‘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,” Journalism History 51:2 (2025), 117-138, DOI: 10.1080/00947679.2025.2450832
Past Recipients
2025 Bailey G. Dick, “What We Talk about When We Talk about Women: Benevolent Sexism in Historical Studies of Women Journalists, 1974–2023,” Journalism History 50:3 (2024), 227-252, DOI: 10.1080/00947679.2024.2367190
2024 Edgar Simpson, “Manipulating the Sphere: Mississippi’s Post-Brown Offensive Against White Journalists,” Journalism History 49:1 (2023), 4-27, DOI: 10.1080/00947679.2022.2161866
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
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.”