EAST LANSING, Mich.  USA Today medical reporter Steve Sternberg, the 1999 recipient of the Global Health Council Excellence in Media Award for his series on AIDS in Africa, presented the annual Frederick S. Siebert Lecture at Michigan State University on Monday, November 6, 2006. Sternberg spoke at the Communication Arts and Sciences Building on the MSU campus. His address – “Covering the plague: AIDS, the press and a personal journey". Sternberg has covered medicine for more than two decades. His breadth of reporting includes global public health, heart disease, AIDS, bioterrorism, the human genome project and many other medical issues. He joined USA Today in 1998.

In addition to the Global Health Council honor, Sternberg has received awards including The National Headliner, the Penney-Missouri award, The Society for Professional Journalist's Green Eyeshade award, and the Dag Hammarskjold Award for human rights journalism from the former National Association of Physicians in AIDS Care.

Previously, Sternberg has been a reporter at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the Miami Herald. Sternberg has written for publications including The Washington Post, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Mother Jones, Medical Economics, Science, The Scientist, and Science News.

In 1992, Sternberg was selected for a John S. Knight Professional Journalism Fellowship at Stanford University, where he studied genetics, health policy, medical ethics, and African history. In 1995, he was granted a Kaiser Family Foundation media fellowship in public health.

He is a graduate of Ithaca College (B.A., English literature) and the Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars' science writing program (M.A.).

The MSU School of Journalism established the Siebert Lecture series in 1968 in honor of Frederick S. Siebert, director of the School of Journalism from 1957 to 1960 and dean of the College of Communication Arts and Sciences from 1960 to 1967. The lecture provides an annual forum for discussion of issues relating to journalism, freedom of the press and/or the First Amendment.

Additional information is online at: www.cas.msu.edu