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BENJAMIN’S FREEDOM OF THE AIR AND THE PUBLIC INTEREST WINS DISTINGUISHED PUBLICATION AWARD   The National Communications Association recently selected Louise M. Benjamin’s Freedom of the Air and Public Interest: First Amendment Rights in Broadcasting to 1935 as the winner of the 2002 Haiman Award, according to Doug Fraleigh, Haiman Award Committee Chair, NCA. The award will be presented during a ceremony to be held at the annual NCA convention, held this year in New Orleans this November. The book is published by Southern Illinois University Press.   Fraleigh wrote in the official notice to Benjamin: “Our committee was very impressed by the depth of your research and your clarity of writing. You did an excellent job of bringing this subject to life. In our opinion, your work effectively introduces the reader to the historical forces that influenced broadcast regulation in the early days and it also provides a window into free expression issues that remain salient today. As one of the committee members wrote, your book is a ‘wonderful scholarly work.’”   A unique and definitive study of freedom of expression rights in electronic media from the 1920s through the mid-1930s, Benjamin’s Freedom of the Air and the Public Interest: First Amendment Rights in Broadcasting to 1935 (304 pages, $39.95 cloth) examines the evolution of free speech rights in early radio. Her discussions include controversial topics such as censorship, speakers’ rights of access to the medium, broadcasters’ rights to use radio as they desired, listeners’ rights to receive information via the airwaves, and the development of the Radio Act of 1927 along with the Communications Act of 1934. Controversies caused by new technology today continue to rage over virtually the same rights and issues that Benjamin deals with in her award-winning volume.   Louise M. Benjamin is an associate professor in the department of telecommunications at the University of Georgia. She has worked in television broadcasting as a writer, producer, and director and has written numerous articles and book chapters on the history and regulation of electronic media.   Freedom of the Air and the Public Interest: First Amendment Rights in Broadcasting to 1935 is available through Southern Illinois University Press (800-346-2680, www.siu.edu/~siupress).  More marketing news