We at the Poynter Institute take some special pride in the announcement that one of our former college students, Diana Sugg, has won a Pulitzer Prize for beat reporting. Diana covers the health beat at the
Baltimore Sun, and won her prize for "stories that illuminated complex medical issues through the lives of people."
Diana first
came to Poynter in the mid 1980s, fresh out of a sterling college career at Villanova University. She attended our six-week program for recent college graduates, a journalism boot camp where young people test out their desire to be reporters.
I remember Diana as athletic and energetic, a young woman with blue eyes and honey-wheat hair and a quick smile, who loved the old rock tune, "Build Me Up, Buttercup." She loved to play, and she lived to work.
As the teacher of that course, I saw in the person of Diana a zeal for perfecting her craft that was so intense that it was almost scary. As a cautionary tale for other teachers, I must say candidly that I could not see in her stories the seeds of greatness, or that she would become, in the words of my Poynter colleague, Gregory Favre, "the best beat writer I've ever seen."
Diana got her first job at the AP bureau in Philadelphia and went on to the
Herald-Journal in Spartanburg, South Carolina. It was there that her mojo for dogged reporting kicked in, whether trailing the King of Soul, James Brown, for some brush with the law, or tracking down sightings of the Lizard Man in Scape Ore Swamp.
It was Gregory Favre who recognized her talent, and nurtured Diana, as a beat journalist. He had hired her to cover crime for the
Sacramento Bee. After two years on that beat, she switched over to health and medicine, at a time when the Clintons were trying to reform the health care system in America.
By the time that Diana moved back East to the
Baltimore Sun, and to the nearby facilities of Johns Hopkins, she had become one of the best medical writers in the country. That greatness now has the Pulitzer brand. Consider the opening of this story, published on August 11, 2002:
"After they'd injected the dying man with IV medications, after they'd pounded his chest, after they'd cut Robert Jackson open and jolted his heart with electricity, there was nothing left for Dr. Carnell Cooper, except to prepare for the moment doctors dread, the hardest job in medicine.
"Cooper changed out of his bloodstained scrubs and tried to think through what to say. Then, heavy with the pain he was going to inflict on Jackson's girlfriend, he started the walk downstairs.
"Cooper and Dr. Steven Johnson came upon Annette Edmonds, 32, in the long hallway. She was standing alone, holding her arms tight against her body, waiting for them. The doctors cleared the other families from Maryland Shock Trauma Center's waiting room, turning off the blaring television and closed the door. The Baltimore woman sat on a small sofa and looked down at the carpet. Suddenly, the only sound that July night was the hum of the fluorescent lights.
"'Is there anyone here with you,' Cooper asked. She shook her head no. ...
"It is a painful, centuries-old ritual that physicians and nurses hate. They get little training for this moment, and no matter how many times they break news of a death, it never gets any easier. Many doctors struggle through this devastating conversation. But organized medicine has finally realized its importance, stepping up training nationwide for medical students, residents and even veteran physicians."
As I've said on numerous occasions about Diana Sugg, she is a reporter who combines the hardware and the software, the stick-to-it-ive-ness to persevere through any difficulty to get a story, and the sensitivity to deal with those suffering pain and loss.
Part of her education has come from her own medical hardships. Over the past dozen years, she has suffered blackouts, crippling migraine headaches, and seizures, a neurological condition that has, so far, defied clear diagnosis. She is currently on medical leave and in rehab from the effects of a small stroke. But her voice on the telephone has been strong, and the strength is returning to her right hand allowing her, once again, to grip a pen.
I have never seen a reporter -- even one in full health -- work with more passion and determination than Diana Sugg.
Poynter is proud to claim her as one of our own. She has gone from college student, to professional seminar participant, to visiting faculty member, to member of our national advisory board.
Diana Sugg is the second graduate of Poynter's summer college program to win a Pulitzer. The first was Liz Balmaseda, who won in commentary for her
Miami Herald columns.
