Diana also covered breaking news stories, including reports on the implantable breathing device, the heartbreaking bus crash of the Bluffton baseball team, the latest trends in adolescent drug behavior and plastic surgery on vaginas. (Diana believes the editors are still wondering how they let the latter story onto the front page…)
Before joining the paper full-time in 2004, Diana was an award-winning freelance journalist whose work appeared regularly in all sections of The Plain Dealer and its Sunday Magazine. She was a regular contributor to Beliefnet.com, the premier web site on religious news and wrote book reviews for two popular sites, The Book Review and faithfulreader.com, as well as Living Without, a national healthcare publication. She also worked as a reporter and commentator on the local National Public Radio affiliate and as a TV news analyst on PBS’s NewsNight Akron.
Diana majored in political science and journalism at the University of Missouri. After college she returned to Washington, D.C to continue the political journalism path she began in high school, when she served as Strom Thurmond’s Senate page. During college, she was back in nation’s capitol, this time as an intern reporting for UPI in the White House and on Capitol Hill. After graduation, she moved to D.C. and took a Senate staff position with the intention of eventually becoming a press secretary. But falling in love, marrying her high school sweetheart and giving birth to four boys trumped her career ambition but not her desire to write–something she did quite prolifically between multiple moves (Hawaii, California, Australia and Ohio), naps and carpools.
As soon as her youngest son was old enough to tie his own shoes, she joined The Plain Dealer full-time.
She left the paper in 2007, following love again. This time, to Atlanta where her husband accepted a job with a new firm and she accepted a teaching position in the Journalism program at Emory University.
Like the Rowlands, Diana and her husband are also Milwaukee natives. The Keough’s and their four boys now live in Atlanta.
Tags: Beliefnet.com, Living Without, Plain Dealer
