Eugenia M. Palmegiano Prize Recipients
The Eugenia M. Palmegiano Prize in the History of Journalism is awarded annually to the author of the most outstanding book published in English on any aspect of the history of journalism, concerning any area of the world, and any period. This prize recognizes the vital contributions that journalism history has made to our understanding of the past.
2021
Vanessa Freije, Citizens of Scandal: Journalism, Secrecy, and the Politics of Reckoning in Mexico (Duke Univ. Press)
2020
Vincent DiGirolamo, Crying the News: A History of America’s Newsboys (Oxford Univ. Press)
2019
Phoebe Musandu, Pressing Interests: The Agenda and Influence of a Colonial East African Newspaper Sector (McGill-Queen’s Univ. Press)
2018
Julia Guarneri, Newsprint Metropolis: City Papers and the Making of Modern Americans (Univ. of Chicago Press)
2017
Amelia Bonea, The News of Empire: Telegraphy, Journalism, and the Politics of Reporting in Colonial India, c. 1830-1900 (Oxford Univ. Press)
2021 Palmegiano Prize
Vanessa Freije, University of Washington–Seattle
Citizens of Scandal: Journalism, Secrecy, and the Politics of Reckoning in Mexico (Duke Univ. Press)
This extensively researched book shows how a diverse set of political scandals allowed the Mexican media to carve a new role for themselves from the 1960s to the 1980s and thereby helped undermine Mexico’s longstanding one-party political system. Vanessa Freije recognizes that the journalists she highlights were not saints and that they sometimes relied on racial stereotypes or reflected narrow political interests. Freije’s careful analysis and her clear prose make the significance of the story she tells clear, even to readers with no background in modern Mexican history.