The Standing Committee on Research of the Association for Education in Journalism & Mass Communication (AEJMC), selected Into the Fray: How NBC’s Washington Documentary Unit Reinvented the News for this year’s Tankard Award from a group of three finalists that also included Women of the Washington Press: Politics, Prejudice, and Persistence, by Maurine H. Beasley, and Can Journalism Survive? An Inside Look at American Newsrooms, by David M. Ryfe. AEJMC Executive Director Jennifer McGill administers the book award competition, which recognizes the best book relevant to journalism and mass communication.

Dr. Tori Ekstrand (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill), chaired the August 8 Tankard Book Award presentation at AEJMC’s annual convention of journalism scholars and media professionals at the Renaissance Hotel in Washington, D.C. Dr. Ekstrand praised Into the Fray for its originality and extensive research in covering an overlooked part of journalism history.

Into the Fray, published by Potomac Books of Washington, D.C., is a band-of-brothers story of documentary journalism. As a biography of filmmaker Ted Yates and also the men and women that formed his unique documentary crew, Into the Fray traces how World War II values shaped the television documentary at the NBC News Washington Bureau from 1961 through 1967, when Ted Yates was killed during the outbreak of the Six-Day War. It also covers Washington, D.C. history as it relates to the formation of the NBC unit, including experiences of military veterans, minorities, and women in journalism.

A Journalism History review explains, “Mascaro provides a thorough perspective of the social and political context for each of the events the [NBC documentary] unit investigated.” Gateway Journalism Review characterizes Into the Fray as “a significant contribution to the history of broadcast journalism and the long-form documentary.” And American Journalism credits “the author’s ability to take us inside the process of documentary work, showing the complicated interplay between the people involved in the projects as well as the challenges and obstacles.”

Dr. Paula Poindexter, acting AEJMC president, explains the award honors the memory of her esteemed colleague, James William Tankard, Jr., Professor Emeritus in the School of Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin. Tankard was a popular, innovative professor and mentor who died in 2005. The Tankard Book Award has been issued annually since 2007.

Dr. Tom Mascaro is an Associate Professor in the Department of Telecommunications at the School of Media and Communication, Bowling Green (Ohio) State University. He is co-founder of the Broadcast Education Association Documentary Division. His publications have appeared in the Journal of Popular Film and Television, Journalism History, and American Journalism. Into the Fray is his first book and was based on numerous interviews with network documentary producers and filmmakers and extensive research at presidential and other national archives.

See www.aejmc.org for further information.