The Diederich College of Communication and the O’Brien Fellowship in Public Service Journalism welcome Ginger Thompson and Doris Burke, both of ProPublica.

Sick in a Hospital Town

"Sick in a Hospital Town" focuses on how residents of Albany, a majority African-American town of nearly 70,000 people in South Georgia, suffer high rates of various health afflictions despite the nearby presence of Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital. Thompson and Burke found that residents of the town pay some of the nation’s highest health insurance rates, but experience diabetes and heart disease far more than comparable areas. Their work won the Dori J. Maynard Justice Award, an honor sponsored by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation that celebrates journalism that addresses injustice and inequality. 

“'Sick in a Hospital Town' reflects the driving mission of the O’Brien Fellowship: Advancing justice and exposing inequities through exceptional journalism,” O’Brien Fellowship Director Jeffery Gerritt said. “The ProPublica series shows that U.S. journalists — despite significant industry-wide challenges — continue to produce groundbreaking and impactful accountability journalism.” 

This award celebrates journalism that overcomes ignorance, stereotypes, intolerance, racism, hate, negligence and indifference. Winning entries will bridge any or all of the social fault lines and fissures of race, gender, religion, class, caste, generation, disability, illness, nationality and geography. Sponsored by the O'Brien Fellowship, this award is named in memory of Dori J. Maynard, who was an ASNE board member and a strong advocate for news and newsroom diversity and journalism that addressed injustices. A longtime journalist, Ms. Maynard was the president of the Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education, which is dedicated to helping news media accurately portray all segments of society.

Join us for an interactive discussion with the reporters along with time for Q&A from the audience.

About the speakers

Doris Burke (left) and Ginger Thompson (right) are the speakers at this year's Burleigh Lecture.

Ginger Thompson

Ginger Thompson is a managing editor at ProPublica, a position that she holds after 15 years at the New York Times as Mexico City bureau chief and investigative reporter. She also was a Latin America correspondent for The Baltimore Sun, where her reporting on a secret Honduran death squad was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. She’s won several prestigious reporting honors, including a Maria Moors Cabot Prize and the Selden Ring Award for investigative reporting.

Doris Burke

Doris Burke is a senior research reporter at ProPublica covering corporate wrongdoing. A reporter at ProPublica since 2019, Burke previously spend time at The New York Times and Fortune Magazine. Along the way, Burke has reported on the inner workings of some of America’s most consequential companies, including Pfizer, Cargill, Google, Uber, Facebook and Microsoft. Burke has received the Selden Ring Award and IRE Award, among other notable accolades, for her work. 

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About the Burleigh Media Ethics Lecture

The annual Burleigh Media Ethics Lecture addresses topical and moral issues facing the world today. Sponsored annually by the J. William and Mary Diederich College of Communication, the lecture honors William R. Burleigh, a 1957 Marquette journalism graduate, who started working for the Evansville, Ind. Press at age 14 as a sports reporter. He retired in 2000 as president and CEO of the E.W. Scripps Company, having led the transformation of Scripps from primarily a newspaper enterprise into a media company with interest in cable and broadcast television, newspaper publishing, e-commerce, interactive media, licensing and syndication. Burleigh lectures address ethical issues today's communicators report on, as well as those they wrestle with in their own work.