Named in honor of Frank Luther Mott, Pulitzer Prize winner, educator and long-time leader of Kappa Tau Alpha, the award is made for the best research-based book about journalism or mass communication published each year.

Kappa Tau Alpha, the national college honor society founding in 1910 for scholarship in journalism and mass communication, has recognized research contributions to the field since the inauguration of the award in 1944. The winning author receives a $1000 prize.

Entries are judged by a panel of university professors of journalism and mass communication and national officers of Kappa Tau Alpha.

Maurine H.Beasley won the award for the best book published in 2012 for Women of the Washington Press: Politics, Prejudice and Persistence (Northwestern University Press). The book recounts the journalists’ contributions to journalism and politics, “but more important their determination, struggle, craftiness and indefatigable spirit” (Peter J.Gade, University of Oklahoma). “Beasley demonstrates the institutional discrimination against which women reporters had to fight, putting journalism’s glass ceiling into greater historical context” (Andrew Mendelson, Temple University). The book traces how Washington journalism changed from a male-dominated one to a time when women were the bureau chiefs of all the major networks, the Associated Press and some major newspapers.

Other finalists were Brooke Kroeger forUndercover Reporting: The Truth About Deception(Northwestern University Press); Jonathan M. Ladd for Why Americans Hate the Media and How It Matters (Princeton University Press; and Tom Mascaro for Into the Fray: How NBC’s Washington Documentary Unit Reinvented the News (Potomac Books).

Books with a 2013 copyright will be received until Dec. 9, 2013. Books with a 2013 copyright received after the entry deadline may be accepted if arrangements are made prior to the deadline.

Edited volumes (i.e., collected works by several authors), textbooks and revised editions previously entered are not eligible. Paperback editions are acceptable. To enter, send six copies to:

For further information, write, phone (573) 882-7685 or e-mail (umcjourkta@missouri.edu).

Click for a list of previous winners.