As I lay dying

Laurie Becklund's op-ed posthumously published in the LA Times…….

In memoriam: Senior fellow Laurie Becklund

Senior fellow Laurie Becklund, an award-winning journalist and former staff writer at the Los Angeles Times, passed away Sunday night at her home in Hollywood from metastatic breast cancer. She was 66. The USC Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership & Policy mourns the loss of Becklund, who exemplified CCLP’s mission of shaping the future of news and civic discourse. “Aileen and I knew and admired Laurie for more than 30 years,” said CCLP director Geoffrey Cowan. “She was a courageous reporter but an even more courageous cancer victim. We were lucky to have had her in our lives.” Becklund spoke……

Laurie Becklund

Senior Fellow Laurie Becklund is an award-winning bilingual Los Angeles journalist, author, integrated media project developer, and CCLP Senior Fellow. She has a 25-year career as a journalist, most of that time as a staff writer at the Los Angeles Times. She conducted award-winning team investigations into malfeasance and gross negligence at the Los Angeles County Coroner-Medical Examiner; the toxic poisoning of thousands of Mexican "canal people" whose health mattered less than the tomatoes they picked for U.S. export; prominent LA businessmen who secretly owned slums in the name of their pets; and outrageous sexual harassment by media moguls that……