Alumni Visits

Wednesday October 16, 2013 Ernie Suggs Alumni of North Carolina Central University and reporter for Atlanta Journal- Constitution came to speak with the Mass Communication department.

Mr. Suggs came to visit NCCU during its homecoming and spoke to students about how he became the reporter that he is today. Suggs spoke on how he started his path in professional journalism here at NCCU working with the Campus Echo. Suggs explained that his passion for writing is what drove him to dedicate his time writing and publishing stories for the Echo. He told us how he applied for an internship with the National Association of Black journalist. After being accepted he went off to New York to work for Gannett Westchester newspaper coving the Yankees.

Graduating NCCU in 1990 Mr. Suggs went back to New York where he had a job waiting for him at Gannett Newspaper. Working for two year at Gannett he moved back to Durham NC to work for the Herald Sun Newspaper as a reporter. In 1996 Suggs was awarded a fellowship with the Education Writers Association for his work covering NCCU. This landed Suggs a job traveling the south to do a series of stores covering HBCU's.

Being very active in the National Association of Black Journalist Suggs became too organization vice president in 2005. Three year later Suggs was one of twenty-nine people, two who were black to be selected worldwide to become a Niemen Fellow at Harvard University. When Suggs graduated from Harvard University he was named to the Niemen Foundation's Advisory Board.

Chambers Class