The Society of Professional Journalists, the nation's top organization for working journalists, has designated Dr. Marlin Shipman's recently published book, The Penalty is Death, as the nation's outstanding research about journalism in 2002.  

The award will be presented July 11 at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.  

SPJ will present the Sigma Delta Chi Excellence in Journalism awards to working journalists, but Shipman will receive the only award for research.

Shipman's book, published by the University of Missouri Press, is an analysis of how newspapers reported on the executions of women in the United States from 1847 to present. 

A member of the ASU faculty since 1981, Shipman completed his Ph.D. at the University of Missouri at Columbia.  He is a professor of journalism at ASU.

The ASU news release about the book is available in the NewsPage archive (http://asunews.astate.edu/shipman.htm).  The SPJ news release about the award is at http://www.spj.org/news.asp?ref=321.

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