Journalism profs pull in writing awards

Two UM journalism professors were honored by their peers in March, one winning for a seminal study of journalism during the reign of the Anaconda Copper Mining Company and the other for a nonfiction first book.

Professor Dennis Swibold’s “Copper Chorus: Mining, Politics and the Montana Press, 1889-1959” won the Spur Award from the Western Writers of America in the contemporary nonfiction category. Michael Downs, a UM visiting assistant professor, won the 2006 River Teeth Literary Nonfiction Prize for his first book, “House of Good Hope.”

The Spur Awards are among the oldest and most prestigious in American literature. The winners are selected by a panel of judges and, according to the organization, “are given for works whose inspiration, image and literary excellence best represent the reality and spirit of the American West.”

Swibold’s book about the Anaconda Company’s grip on the Montana press beat out 41 other books nominated in that category. “Copper Chorus” is the first book to examine “the extent, effectiveness and consequences of one of the nation’s most notorious and enduring cases of industrial press ownership,” according to its publisher, the Montana Historical Society Press.

Swibold will be honored with other winners in June at the Western Writers of America convention in Springfield, Mo. Other 2007 Spur winners include Tony Hillerman for his novel “The Shape Shifter” and Alan Geoffrion for “Broken Trail,” which recently was made into a movie starring Robert Duval.

Downs received recognition from his colleagues, as well as from sports writer Buzz Bissinger, the author of “Friday Night Lights,” who said of his book, “‘House of Good Hope’ is just a beautiful book, filled with the poignant bittersweet of hope and loss ... The subjects are agonizing, but they shine with the poetic clarity of Downs’ prose.”

Downs’ novel follows the story of a promise made by five athletes in Hartford, Conn., who met while playing on their high school football team. The five men, all gifted in their own ways, pledged to each other that they would one day return to the hometown that made them who they were and make it a better place to live, even though

the city was falling apart right before their eyes. “I knew that after college they’d be confronted with the reality of their promise,” Downs said. “Maybe they would break the promise, but their stories, mixed as they might be, would allow me to explore the questions that were troubling me.”

A former reporter for the Hartford Courant, Downs includes himself in the book. He writes about making peace with his own decision to leave his hometown of Hartford and examines his decision throughout the book, questioning if it was the right one. He met the five athletes and witnessed their pledge while he reported on high school sports for the paper.