Plain Dealer reporter Diane Suchetka has won the firar MOLLY National Journalism Award for "Bernard's Story."
The four-part series detailed the journey of Bernard Hill, a high school dropout from the Mount Pleasant neig
hborhood who earned a high school equivalency diploma.The MOLLY award honors the late Molly Ivins, a legendary columnist and former editor of The Texas Observer in Austin, Texas. Ivins, 62, died in 2007. She had breast cancer.
The award, which is in its first year, recognizes the best print and online journalism that focuses on civil liberties and so cial justice and in cludes a $5,000 prize.
"We're proud of Diane for becoming the first winner of the MOLLY," said Plain Dealer Editor Susan Goldberg. "The stories captured the spirit of a young man who refused to quit -- characteristics that Molly Ivins celebrated in her columns for many years. Diane sets a high bar for the award."
Suchetka will receive the award today in Austin at a ceremony where broadcast journalist Dan Rather will give the keynote speech.
"If I could've designed the journalism prize I most wanted to win, this would've been it," Suchetka said. "Molly Ivins had more pluck and wit and brains and heart than anybody in this business. And she used it all to do good, to tell the truth, fight for the little guy, bring about justice. She's my hero."
Click on the headline to read "Bernard's Story."
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Diane graduated from Kent State's journalism school with a bachelor's degree in 1979 and a master's degree in 1988. Before joining The Plain Dealer in 2004, she spent 19 years with the former KR paper The Charlotte Observer, where she was one of a group of reporters to win the Society of Professional Journalists Green Eyeshade Award for a series of stories on flaws in the administration of the death penalty.
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