Lucinda Franks, Pulitzer-winning journalist and author, dies at 74
Harrison Smith
When Lucinda Franks started her journalism career in 1968, she was known simply as a “coffee girl,” charged with ensuring that the reporters in United Press International’s London newsroom — nearly all of them men — were adequately caffeinated. Impressing editors with stories she wrote on her own time, she was assigned to cover beauty contests and dog shows.
But Ms. Franks had far greater ambitions. An American expatriate and self-described hippie, she went to Belfast one weekend to march for civil rights on behalf of Northern Ireland’s Catholic minority, then found herself in the middle of a major story after the marchers were attacked by club-wielding Protestants near the Irish border.