Maurine H. Beasley, BJ ’58, has won the 2013 Frank Luther Mott/Kappa Tau Alpha Research Award for the best book on journalism and mass communication based on original research published in 2012. “Women of the Washington Press: Politics, Prejudice, and Persistence” recounts the journalists’ contributions to journalism and politics, “but more important, their determination, struggle, craftiness and indefatigable spirit,” writes Peter J. Gade, PhD ’99, University of Oklahoma and a finalist judge. Andrew Mendelson, PhD ’67, Temple University, notes that the book demonstrates “the institutionalized discrimination against which women reporters had to fight, putting journalism’s glass ceiling into greater historical context.” The award is in honor of Mott, Pulitzer Prize winner, educator and long-time leader of KTA, the national college honor society for journalism and mass communication that was founded at the Missouri School of Journalism in 1910. The competition has been held annually since 1944. The $1,000 prize will be presented Aug. 9 in Washington, D.C., during the annual convention of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication.

Updated: May 26, 2013