Pulitzer Prize winner and renowned journalist to speak at AUM’s Ingram Lecture

Diana K. Sugg

Diana K. Sugg, a veteran newspaper reporter who worked her way up from writing radio copy at 2 a.m. for the Associated Press to winning the Pulitzer Prize, will be the speaker for the 2009 Robert Ingram Lecture Series in Mass Communication. Her presentation, which is free and open to the public, will be Sunday, Oct. 25, 7:30 p.m., in the Moore Hall Auditorium.

Sugg chased after musician James Brown in South Carolina, got to triple murders before the police in California and tried to figure out health care reform.

As a medical reporter at The Baltimore Sun for 10 years, she covered a range of breaking news and features. She won the Pulitzer Prize for beat reporting in 2003 for a collection of stories that delved into the primitive nature of modern medicine. By taking on taboo topics and getting inside some of the most intimate moments in health care, she gave readers a clear-eyed look at how far medical science still needs to go in areas including sepsis, stillbirths and the too-routine task of breaking news of death.

For another major project, “If I Die,” Sugg worked for two years to get inside the world of dying children to document the dilemmas faced by children, parents and caregivers.

A native of Rockville, Md., Sugg learned journalism editing her college newspaper and writing for $5 an inch for a community weekly. After graduating Phi Beta Kappa from Villanova University, she landed her first job in the Philadelphia bureau of the Associated Press and then moved to cover general assignment and crime at The Spartanburg Herald-Journal in South Carolina. She was police reporter and later health reporter at The Sacramento Bee, where she won national awards for both. She earned her master’s degree in journalism on a Kiplinger Public Affairs Reporting Fellowship at Ohio State University.

In the last few years, she lived in Geneva, Switzerland, with her husband and two young sons. She recently moved back to the U.S. and plans to do freelance journalism and teaching.

The lecture series honors Robert Ingram, respected for his long tenure as Alabama’s pre-eminent political reporter and commentator. Prior to his death, Ingram lectured in the Auburn Montgomery departments of Communication and Dramatic Arts and Political Science and Public Administration, and he was an emeritus member of the AUM Advisory Board. In October 2003, he was inducted into the University of Alabama’s College of Communication and Information Sciences’ Hall of Fame, created to honor, preserve and perpetuate the accomplishments of communication personalities.

Past Speakers in the Series

Sept. 24, 2009