Weaver, Wilhoit, Willnat win SPJ award for research about journalism
Media School professors emeriti David H. Weaver and G. Cleveland Wilhoit, along with Lars Willnat, MA ’91, PhD ’92, have been awarded the Sigma Delta Chi Award for Research in Journalism from the Society of Professional Journalists. They received the award for the book, “The American Journalist in the Digital Age: A Half-Century Perspective.”
Judges for the Sigma Delta Chi awards chose winners from entries in categories covering print, radio, television and online. The awards recognize outstanding work published or broadcast in 2017.
“Lars Willnat, Cleve Wilhoit and I are honored to win this national award for research about journalism from the Society of Professional Journalists for the fourth time since the 1980s,” Weaver said. “This kind of recognition from the largest association of journalists in the United States, the very people we have studied over the decades, means a great deal to us as journalism educators. It has been a pleasure and a privilege to work with my mentor and former professor, Cleve Wilhoit, over the past four decades and to see a former graduate student, Lars Willnat, become a chaired professor at Syracuse University and the new leader of this four-decade project.”
“The American Journalist in the Digital Age” is based on interviews with nearly 1,100 U.S. journalists in the fall of 2013 to document the changes that have occurred in U.S. journalism in the past decade. This survey of journalists updates the findings from previous studies and asks new questions about the impact of new technologies and social media in the newsroom, and it includes more nontraditional online journalists than the previous studies.
Lars Willnat is the John Ben Snow Research Professor at Syracuse University and earned his PhD from Indiana University. David H. Weaver is Distinguished Professor and the Roy W. Howard Research Professor Emeritus in Journalism at Indiana University. Weaver earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from IU and his PhD from the University of North Carolina. G. Cleveland Wilhoit is Emeritus Professor at Indiana University and earned his PhD from the University of North Carolina.
Weaver and Wilhoit plan to attend the Sigma Delta Chi awards banquet on June 8 at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.