Pulitzer 1918 announcement including Lewinson and Hough

On 6 May 1918, the Pulitzer Prize board announced the 1918 Pulitzer Prizes, including the rarely bestowed Newspaper History award. On that occasion, the prize was jointly granted to Minna Lewinson and Henry Beetle Hough for their research paper, "A History of the Services Rendered to the Public by the American Press During the Year 1917."

This recognition was especially notable because the Newspaper History category was awarded only once in Pulitzer history, making Lewinson and Hough the sole recipients. The judges praised their work as "the best history of the services rendered to the public by the American press during the preceding year," underscoring its analytical rigor and its contribution to understanding how newspapers supported the public during World War I.

The 1918 announcement situates Lewinson not as a reporter of daily events but as an early scholar of journalism, examining the press as an institution with civic responsibilities. In an era when women were only beginning to gain admission to graduate journalism programs, the acknowledgment of her research at the profession’s highest level foregrounded the intellectual contributions women could make to media history and press criticism. Although the category disappeared from Pulitzer rosters after a few years, this announcement date marks the formal entry of Lewinson’s work into the canon of prize-honored studies of journalism’s role in public life.