J-School professor wins book award  

By Rachel Honrud
J-School Web reporter

photo by Teresa Tamura

Dennis Swibold

J-School professor Dennis Swibold has won the Spur Award from the Western Writers of America in the contemporary non-fiction category for his book “Copper Chorus: Mining, Politics and the Montana Press, 1889-1959.”

“It’s gratifying. I was pleased to get some recognition for the book outside of Montana,” Swibold said. “I thought maybe journalists would be interested in it.”

Swibold said he also hopes journalism students will be interested in his book. It helps students understand where Montana’s present-day journalism came from, he said, and what has changed.

“Copper Chorus” is about the Anaconda Copper Co.’s control of the Montana press. The company owned major newspapers all over Montana for almost 70 years until selling them to Lee Enterprises in 1959.

“Montana was one of the first places you could prove that business interests had control of the press,” Swibold said. “It was a very partisan press. It was a very corrupt time.”

During that time, the public became unsure of which newspapers to trust, most being owned by the Anaconda Copper Co., Swibold said. There was no law stating a newspaper had to tell the public who owned it, he said, and a newspaper tried to hide its ownership as best it could. 

This situation “made everybody suspicious of every newspaper … so the whole credibility of every newspaper in Montana was stained,” he said.  “People had done research on different aspects of [the company’s hold on the press], but no one had put the whole story together.”

Swibold’s book beat out 41 other books nominated in his category, and he joins other 2007 Spur Award winners such as Tony Hillerman, who won in the Best Western Short Novel category for his book “The Shape Shifter.”

The Spur awards “are given for works whose inspiration, image and literary excellence best represent the reality and spirit of the American West,” according to the Western Writers of America.

Swibold said the best part of winning the award is all the e-mails he’s gotten from former students and colleagues. 

Since last fall, Swibold said he has been giving talks about his book around the state on weekends and is surprised at how interested the public is.  Some crowd members were around when the corruption was happening and have told him their own stories of that time, he said.

Swibold will attend a banquet in Springfield, Mo., in June to accept his award.  “I hope I get to meet Tony Hillerman,” he said.  

Back to J-School main page