From the 1930s to the early 1960s, a select group of Mount Holyoke students, often staff members of The Mount Holyoke News, were invited annually to the offices of the Holyoke Transcript-Telegram, a local newspaper, to be guest journalists for a day. As guests of the newspaper, students had their articles published in the Holyoke Transcript–Telegram. These visits were an opportunity for students to see what working at a newspaper might be like after graduation. The tradition of the “Mount Holyoke day at the T-T” was established by William G. Dwight, an editor and publisher at the newspaper and Trustee for Mount Holyoke College, and his wife Minnie Ryan Dwight, an editor and publisher at the Holyoke Transcript-Telegram.
In 1953, the Minnie Ryan Dwight Prize for excellence in journalism was established. A prize of $25 was awarded to a Mount Holyoke student either in the English department’s journalism class, Mount Holyoke College News Bureau, or the student newspaper.