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.
Lucinda Franks Dies at 74; Prize-Winning Journalist Broke Molds
She avoided covering beauty pageants by going to Northern Ireland on her own and was later the first woman to win a Pulitzer for national reporting.
Lucinda Franks in 1991. She wrote for leading magazines and produced two well-received memoirs, about her father’s secret past and her marriage to the Manhattan district attorney Robert M. Morgenthau.Credit.David Damroth
Published May 6, 2021Updated May 20, 2021
Lucinda Franks, a widely published writer and investigative journalist who was the first woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for national reporting, died on Wednesday in Hopewell Junction, N.Y. She was 74.
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