Manship School alumna and Pulitzer Prize staff winner Amy Brittain to deliver LSU summer commencement address

07/17/2016

Manship School of Mass Communication alumna and Washington Post investigative reporter Amy Brittain will deliver the keynote address at LSU’s 290th commencement ceremony on Friday, Aug. 5, in the Pete Maravich Assembly Center, beginning at 9 a.m.

 

“We’re proud to have one of our prominent young alums come back to LSU to share her experiences investigating issues of such national prominence … one that unfortunately hits very close to home,” said LSU President F. King Alexander. “Her success demonstrates what an LSU degree can do for our students.”

 

Brittain, a native of Shreveport, La., is part of the Washington Post staff recently recognized with a Pulitzer Prize for national reporting.

 

“I’m very much looking forward to returning to LSU to speak at the summer commencement ceremony,” Brittain said. “It’s both an honor and an immense challenge to address such an accomplished class of graduates, along with a crowd of family members and friends who have supported them as they pursued their degrees. I know it will be a great day.”

 

Brittain received her bachelor’s degree with a concentration in print journalism from the Manship School in 2009. She worked as a reporter for The Daily Reveille for four years while at LSU. She held internship positions with the International Center for Journalists in Washington, D.C., in 2006; The Christian Science Monitor in Boston in 2007; The Arizona Republic in Phoenix in 2008; and MLB.com in San Diego in 2009.

 

In 2010, Brittain received a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University, where she studied at the Toni Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism. After graduating from Columbia, she began her first full-time job as a reporter with The Star-Ledger in Newark, N.J. Her series, “Strong at Any Cost,” which detailed the use of anabolic steroids and human growth hormone by hundreds of New Jersey police officers and firefighters, won the 2010 George Polk Award for Metropolitan Reporting.

 

Brittain began at The Washington Post in 2013 as an investigative reporter. While at The Washington Post, she has covered a range of topics, including deaths of children in unregulated daycares, the Ebola epidemic in West Africa – during a two week reporting trip to Guinea – and the circumstances of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s death.

 

The Manship School will host a reception honoring Brittain on Thursday, August 4, from 5:30 – 7:30 p.m. in the Holliday Forum. RSVP by July 29 to asolom8@lsu.edu.

 

For more information on the Washington Post series, visit http://www.pulitzer.org/winners/washington-post-staff.

 

For more information about summer commencement, visit www.lsu.edu/commencement.