History Awards
Leibner Cooper Grant
The LABF, in association with the Broadcast Education Association and the Leibner Cooper Family Foundation, awards each year the Leibner Cooper Grant ($2,500) for Creative Productions on the History of Media to a faculty member who is producing a documentary, news story, multimedia project or sports production focused on historical issues, figures and/or events related to media.
The 2025 grant was awarded to Dr. Kortni Alston Lemon for her audio mini-series Rosalynn Carter’s Caring Call: How Former United States First Lady’s Historic Compassionate Legacy Has Transformed Mental Health Journalism and Continues to Transform Newsrooms.
Lemon, a former TV station news director and reporter, is currently an associate professor of journalism and communications and chair of the Department of Communication Art, & Design at Gardner-Webb University.
Broadcast Historian
Awards
The LABF, in association with the Broadcast Education Association, presents two Broadcast Historian Awards each year along with a $2,500 prize.
Broadcast Historian Book Award to an educator who has published a book specifically related to broadcast/media history.
Broadcast Historian Creative Award to an educator who has produced a documentary/multimedia project specifically related to broadcast/media history.
The winner of the 2025 award is Dr. Molly A. Schneider, for her book Gold Dust on the Air: Television Anthology Drama and Midcentury American Culture (University of Texas Press, 2024). The book is a cultural history of anthology dramas on U.S. TV in the 1950s and 60s, with a particular focus on the ways the format intersected with notions of “Americanness.”
Dr. Schneider is associate professor in the School of Film and Television at Columbia College Chicago. Her teaching focuses on media history, theory, and criticism in a cultural context. She is primarily a television historian, combining an interest in media history and archives with an interest in cultural discourses surrounding media texts and industries.
Dr. Schneider earned her PhD in the Screen Cultures Program at Northwestern University. She holds an MA in Critical Studies (School of Cinematic Arts) from the University of Southern California and a BA in Performance Studies from Northwestern.
In addition to her duties at Gardner-Webb University, Lemon is a speaker and host and executive producer of The Compassionate Newsroom podcast.
Dr. Schneider’s teaching at Columbia College Chicago focuses on media history, theory, and criticism in a cultural context.
About the Broadcast Education Association: BEA is the premiere international academic media organization, driving insights, excellence in media production, and career advancement for educators, students, and professionals. There are currently more than 2,300 individual and institutional members worldwide. Visit www.beaweb.org for more information.
About the Leibner Cooper Family Foundation: The foundation was formed by Carole Cooper and her late husband Richard Leibner. For more than 50 years, their talent agency, N.S. Bienstock, represented leading TV journalists, including Anderson Cooper, Megyn Kelly, Steve Kroft, David Muir, Norah O’Donnell, Robin Roberts and Bill Whitaker.