This awards database is a compilation of all awards (that could be found!) associated with the American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA) and its predecessor the Society of Magazine Writers (SMW). SMW was founded in May 1948 and the name changed to ASJA in 1975.
There are three organizations in the database that gave awards:
UI = University of Illinois
SMW = Society of Magazine Writers
ASJA = American Society of Journalists and Authors
Why the University of Illinois? In the early days of SMW, many members thought there should be awards for magazine writing. SMW conceived and initiated the Benjamin Frankling Writing Awards administered by the University of Illinois. This was clearly stated in University of Illinois Board of Trustee Minutes: "The idea of annual awards in the magazine field was initiated by the Society of Magazine Writers of New York City and the plan now proposed is the culmination of several years of cooperative effort by the Society and the University through Mr. Josef F. Wright." [Meeting of the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois, March 25, 1953, Page 597.]
Some awards lasted a few years. In some years, especially 1970-1974, there were no awards. Award names varied in the name and in the categories. The names and categories in the database resemble as closely as possible the nomenclature in the Society's newsletters and more recently web pages.
It's been a long haul spanning 14 years to get this database of awards up and running.
I had the idea for this database about 2012. At that time I was the IT Manager for ASJA as well as a member and a former board member. By 2014 a few years of awards information had been added into a database. In 2014 The Kellen Company took over ASJA management and the database project was not on Kellen's radar. And, I lost interest.
But, a different project was the basis for a new interest. That project was my initiative to scan all the back newsletters of the Society. This was around 2010. This became a multi-person, multi-month project coordinating the scanning and organization of hundreds of newsletters from 1951 through about 2001 when the newsletter began to be produced as a PDF. All this work resulted in thousands of pages in hundreds of computer files.
In 2024 I began investigating newer OCR technologies that had become available online and on local computers. Local processing became more accurate and affordable and I settled on that. After a few test runs to convert scanned newsletter PDF files into searchable PDF files, I ran all of the scanned PDF files in small batches through an OCR process to make them searchable. A computer was dedicated to the process, which took many hours to complete.
Actually, I ran all of the several hundred files through two OCR processes: one to make the PDF searchable and another one to create a stand-alone text version of the newsletter.
With the newsletters now searchable, locating issues with information about awards and recipients became easier and more focused, especially with desktop software tools designed for searching through thousands of pages.
Searching through the newsletters was not the only method of locating and verifying awards. Extensive internet searches supplemented the newsletter searches. This resulted in the discovery of personal archives of early members of SMW and ASJA in various locations. From the archives a few old newsletters were obtained to fill in a missing year or missing pages. Archives also supplemented information about awards, such as an award announcement in the winner's local newspaper.
Some AI tools were also used to help identify awards.
Archival material also revealed some interesting information about early members. For example, the 30-year editor of the Superman comic books and early TV series was Mort Weisinger, a founder of SMW. Read a short article about him on this page.
Because SMW began in New York City and the publishing industry in the early years of the Society was more or less centered in New York City, many references to awards and Society members appeared in the New York Times. I was fortunate to obtain free access to the New York Times digital archive, which helped locate and verify awards and related information.
As more and more records were added to the database, I had to frequently update the database structure to accommodate new information. This in turn required changes in the programming languages that pulled data out of the database and in web page coding to display the data. -- Bruce Miller, 2025