Suzanne Clarke McDonough
Encyclopedia
Suzanne Clarke McDonough (born 1933) is an American
journalist
, documentary
filmmaker and anti-drug activist, and the founder of Project Straight Dope, the nation's first anti-drug abuse project. A graduate of the Medill School of Journalism
(BSJ56), McDonough is currently working as a consultant to the World Monument Fund's documentary on The Emperor's Quon Long's Private Refuge in the Forbidden City.
McDonough is featured in the fall 2007 issue of Medill magazine:
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
journalist
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
, documentary
Documentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
filmmaker and anti-drug activist, and the founder of Project Straight Dope, the nation's first anti-drug abuse project. A graduate of the Medill School of Journalism
Medill School of Journalism
The Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications is a constituent school of Northwestern University which offers both undergraduate and graduate programs. It has consistently been one of the top-ranked schools in Journalism in the United States...
(BSJ56), McDonough is currently working as a consultant to the World Monument Fund's documentary on The Emperor's Quon Long's Private Refuge in the Forbidden City.
McDonough is featured in the fall 2007 issue of Medill magazine:
When Opportunity Knocks...
For this alumna, Medill was the gateway to a diverse and satisfying career
Suzanne Clarke McDonough’s (BSJ56) Medill education did not decide the course of her career—not in the typical way. Instead, it ignited the opportunity for rich and varied work in the areas of journalism, filmmaking, anti-drug advocacy, and more. Her diverse accomplishments may have fanned out in the space of fifty years, but for McDonough, their connecting thread is easy to pinpoint. “One project segued into another, but it all started with Medill,” she says.
As a Northwestern student, McDonough worked her way through school and took a job after graduation as PR and advertising director at a Chicago film company. In 1958, she leapt at the chance to become a society reporter for the Chicago Daily News, a job that paid a fraction of her previous salary, but one that rapidly led to feature-writing opportunities (“writing about everything from hula hoops to the mob”) at the paper under acclaimed editor Roy Fisher.
“Taking the spot enabled me to get my foot in the door in the exciting and prestigious world of Chicago print journalism,” says McDonough. “It was worth it, and I loved every minute of it!”
In the mid-sixties McDonough crossed over to broadcast work, becoming producer and interviewer for a half-hour prime-time series on PBS WTTW-TV Chicago that received nationwide circulation. An assignment that tackled drug abuse among teens cultivated a personal passion for the subject—and she went on to found Project Straight Dope, a venture that “cleaned up the airwaves and created the first responsibly produced anti-drug abuse ads aimed at teens and younger.” Another assignment—an interview with prominent Mexican architect Luis Barragán—launched a similarly life-changing project: 10 years spent with Barragán building the Cuernavaca Racquet Club in Mexico.
McDonough worked with the World Monuments Fund to produce a documentary film.
“To me, my life has had or has been a sequence of opportunity; didn’t our professors and parents always say, ‘if you are prepared, the opportunities come’?” says McDonough. “You come out of Medill with a kit of curiosity and a sense of adventure—it has certainly been a springboard to an interesting path.”
McDonough resides in Westchester County, New YorkWestchester County, New YorkWestchester County is a county located in the U.S. state of New York. Westchester covers an area of and has a population of 949,113 according to the 2010 Census, residing in 45 municipalities...
with her husband, William, close to their children and grandchildren, and is currently compiling a memoir.
-Katherine Nugent