New Award Recognizes Best Books by AEJMC Members and Honors Dr. James W. Tankard, Jr.

“The Tankard Book Award idea was conceived as a way to both honor Dr. James W. Tankard, Jr., who was admired for his journalism scholarship, creativity, and character, and celebrate books written by AEJMC members,” said Paula Poindexter, chair of the 2007 Tankard Book Award Committee. With a unanimous recommendation by AEJMC’s Standing Committee on Research, which administers the book award, and unanimous and enthusiastic approval by the Board of Directors, AEJMC established the Tankard Book Award four months after Dr. Tankard died from cancer.

“When we established the Tankard Book Award, we took care to be inclusive,” said Paula Poindexter, a University of Texas journalism professor who chaired the Standing Committee on Research two consecutive years. All first edition books, including scholarly monographs, textbooks, and edited collections, published during the previous calendar year by AEJMC members would be eligible for the Tankard Book Award competition. Authors and co-authors would be able to self-nominate their books by submitting an application and copies of the book to the Tankard Book Award selection committee.

2007 Tankard Book Award Winner
The winner of the 2007 Tankard Book Award is The African American Newspaper: Voice of Freedom, written by Patrick S. Washburn and published by Northwestern University Press. Dr. Washburn is a professor in the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University, where he has been on the faculty since 1984. He was assistant director of the school from 1989 to 2000. He received a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Baylor University in 1963, a master’s in journalism from Indiana University in 1973, and a doctorate from Indiana in mass communications in 1984. He worked ten-and-a-half years as a reporter and columnist on daily newspapers in Texas, Virginia, Georgia, and New York and another four years in the college sports information field at Harvard University and the University of Louisville.

Dr. Washburn has been head of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication’s History Division and president of the American Journalism Historians Association. Since 2001, he has been editor of Journalism History, the country’s oldest mass communication history journal. Dr. Washburn is also author of A Question of Sedition: The Federal Government’s Investigation of the Black Press during World War II, which in 2000 was named by Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly as one of the thirty-five most significant mass communication books published in the twentieth century. Dr. Washburn was also selected as the 2007 recipient of the Eleanor Blum Distinguished Service to Research Award, which recognizes a person who had devoted a substantial part of his or her career to promoting research in mass communication.

“For the first year of the Tankard Book Award, 17 books were nominated and three finalists were selected from the scores of 19 judges,” said Paula Poindexter. “The winner received $1,000 and a stunning award that incorporated the logo that University of Texas at Austin graduate student Melissa Mendoza designed expressly for the Tankard Book Award,” added Poindexter. The two finalists received $500 each and a special certificate. The finalist books were The Year That Defined American Journalism: 1897 and the Clash of  Paradigms, written by W. Joseph Campbell, an associate professor in American University’s School of Communication and a former newspaper and wire service reporter, and Waves of Opposition: Labor and the Struggle for Democratic Media, written by Elizabeth Fones-Wolf, a history professor at West Virginia University.

Legacy of Dr. James W. Tankard, Jr.
A journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin for more than 30 years, and a former journalist at The Raleigh Times and the Associated Press, Dr. Tankard taught undergraduate and graduate courses, including feature writing, computer-assisted reporting, web publishing, research methods, mass communication theory, and literary journalism. In addition to serving as graduate adviser and chairing many Ph.D. dissertations and master’s theses at UT, Dr. Tankard, who held the Jesse H. Jones Professorship in Journalism, was respected and beloved by his students and colleagues. His former graduate students can be found on journalism faculties across the country, including Michigan State, University of Missouri, Indiana University, Virginia Commonwealth University, Baylor University, University of Oregon, Syracuse University, University of South Carolina-Spartanburg, Texas A&M University, University of Texas-Pan American, and University of Texas at Austin.

Dr. Tankard earned his Ph.D. degree at Stanford University and master’s degree at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He authored or co-authored six books, contributed chapters to six books, published dozens of journal articles, presented dozens of convention papers, and served as editor of AEJMC’s Journalism Monographs from 1988 to 1994. Dr. Tankard is, perhaps, best known worldwide as co-author of Communication Theories: Origins, Methods, and Uses in the Mass Media, which is now in its fifth edition and published in six languages. In 2004, Professor Tankard explored theory in a new way when he co-authored How to Build Social Science Theories. His contributions to the development of framing as a theory over the past decade and a half represent some of the most cited scholarship in this important area.

In 2006, Dr. Tankard was the posthumous recipient of AEJMC’s Eleanor Blum Distinguished Service to Research Award, an award so selective that it had only been given 10 times in 25 years. In the nomination letter, Steve Lacy, Michigan State University Journalism Professor, former AEJMC President, and Dr. Tankard’s former graduate student, said: “Jim Tankard’s impact on my research career is incalculable, but his contributions to research go far beyond what he taught me and his many other graduate students. He was an outstanding researcher himself, and he excelled as both a qualitative and quantitative scholar….Jim Tankard ranks among the best of all the researchers with whom I have studied and worked.”

Contributing to The Tankard Book Award Endowment.
The cash prizes and awards are supported by the Tankard Book Award Endowment. If you would like to contribute to the endowment, please send a check made out to AEJMC with a designation for the Tankard Book Award Endowment to: AEJMC, 234 Outlet Pointe Blvd., Suite A, Columbia, South Carolina 29210-5667.