Simon Rockower Award

The awards were created in 1979 by the children of Simon Rockower. Rockower was a Jewish philanthropist, who emigrated to the United States from Austria. In cooperation with the American Jewish Press Association and Yeshiva University, the awards were first given for the year 1980, the hundred year anniversary of Rockower's birth, under the name of the "annual Simon Rockower Memorial Writing Competition."

List of categories

The first competition had six categories. As of the 2016 awards there were 24 categories, and in 2017, 22. In 2024, there were 32 award categories, plus three additional wild card categories for reporting on the Israel-Hamas war.

Until 2020 the entries for most categories were divided by circulation. Since 2021 the divisions are Weekly and Biweekly Newspapers, Monthly Newspapers and Magazines and Web-based Outlets.