Pat Duggins
News DirectorPat Duggins is APR’s news director. As a kid, he watched the Apollo manned moon launches along Florida’s space coast. Pat later spent 14 years covering NASA for NPR. After re-organizing the APR newsroom, he and the team were honored with over 150 awards for excellence in journalism. That includes APR being the first radio newsroom to receive RFK Human Rights’ “Seigenthaler Prize for Courage in Journalism.” Pat holds a master’s degree from the University of Alabama and has published two books on NASA. When he’s not at APR, he enjoys cooking with Lucia, and tending his beloved fig tree.
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The Mobile based band “The Red Clay Strays” took a top honor during last night’s Country Music Awards. The country rock band won vocal group of the year, which broke a seven year streak by Old Dominion in that category. Billboard Magazine listed the win for the Strays as a “surprise” during last night’s CMA’s . -
A federal judge has ordered Alabama to use a new state Senate map in upcoming legislative elections after ruling that districts drawn by lawmakers illegally diluted the voting power of Black residents in the state’s capital city. U.S. District Judge Anna Manasco, appointed by President Donald Trump during his first term, issued the ruling Monday putting a new court-selected map in place for the 2026 and 2030 elections. -
A historic ocean liner will become the world’s largest artificial reef after it's sunk off Florida’s Gulf Coast early next year. Okaloosa County officials announced Tuesday that they expect to sink the SS United States in early 2026 about 22 nautical miles (41 kilometers) southwest of Destin and 32 nautical miles (59 kilometers) southeast of Pensacola. -
Facing a public backlash, the commission that oversees Alabama Public Television voted Tuesday to continue paying its contract with PBS, rejecting an effort — at least for now — to be the first state to cut ties with the broadcast giant because of politics and federal budget cuts. -
Roy Wood, Jr. has come a long way from Birmingham. He launched his comedy career making prank phone calls for a local radio station in the Magic City in 2001. Along with his current success as a stand up comic, Wood is host of CNN's panel show "Have I Got News For You." That followed eight years as a correspondent on "The Daily Show with Trevor Noah." Wood is also out with a new book titled The man of many fathers. It's a memoir focusing on his relationship with his dad, civil rights era journalist and radio show host Roy Wood, Sr, All of that's coming up on APR Notebook. -
Alabama Governor Kay Ivey urged the board that oversees Alabama Public Television to delay any decision on severing ties with PBS until it has studied Alabamians’ opinions on the matter and developed a plan for what comes next. -
Weekend college football was good for Georgia and bad for Alabama in the AP Top 25. The Bulldogs are now in the top four. The Crimson Tide’s first homecoming loss since 2001 dropped Alabama to number ten. Oklahoma outlasted the Tide and that pushed the Sooners to number eight -
The Crimson Tide’s path to the College Football playoffs just got a little more complicated. Alabama head coach Kalen DeBoer suffered his first hometown loss, and the Tide lost its first homecoming game since 2001. That was against LSU. Since then, Alabama has won twenty one homecoming games. -
Revenge? Dirty tricks? Ty Simpson’s Heisman hopes? All of these issues have come up ahead of Alabama’s game against Oklahoma. Homecoming games are often depicted as a chance for students and alumni to gather and watch an easy win. The Crimson Tide may have to deal with allegations in the press from Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin. -
With the longest U.S. government shutdown over, state officials said Thursday that they are working quickly to get full SNAP food benefits to millions of people who made do with little-to-no assistance for the past couple of weeks. Until recently, SNAP families and food banks in Alabama will have to subsist with pledges of emergency funding from Governor Kay Ivey and The State Department of Human Resources.
