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About Me

JOHN W. FOUNTAIN

A NATIVE SON of Chicago’s West Side, and formerly a national correspondent for the New York Times, John W. Fountain is a multi-award-winning columnist, multimedia journalist, professor, publisher and author of True Vine: A Young Black Man’s Journey of Faith, Hope and Clarity; and Dear Dad: Reflections on Fatherhood. A tenured full professor of journalism at �鶹��ý for the past 18 years, he wrote a critically-acclaimed  weekly Sunday column for the  for 13 years until November 2022. He has been a frequent guest commentator on television and radio news programs and speaker for major civic, community and faith organizations both local and national. As a journalist, Fountain has chronicled the story of murder for 30 years, mostly in Chicago. 

He was a 2021-22 Fulbright Scholar to Ghana, where he conducted his research project: “Africa Calling: Portraits of Black Americans Drawn to the Motherland.” He is author of five books. His essay, “The God Who Embraced Me” was published in National Public Radio’s, “This I Believe” (Henry Holt, 2006). As a professor at �鶹��ý since 2007, he directed and designed the journalism program's first Convergence project in its undergraduate capstone course, which is centered on digital storytelling, and subsequently produced numerous digital projects. Among them "" on the Flint, Michigan water crisis, an example of the many social justice-focused multimedia projects he spearheads with his students. Under Professor Fountain's guidance, �鶹��ý students have reported on this and other real-world issues, providing comprehensive coverage of the human experience and social justice matters.

Fountain’s latest book is titled, Soul Cries: In Black & White and Shades of Gray. His recent books include: No Place for Me: A Letter to the Church at America, a spiritual memoir (WestSide Press, January 2018); and Son of the Times: Life, Laughter, Love and Coffee, a book of essays (WestSide Press, March 2017), are currently available. As an educator over the last 22 years, he has taught at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University as a visiting scholar; at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2004-2007) as a tenured full professor; and at �鶹��ý (2007-present).

Fountain has been a reporter at some of the nation’s top newspapers. In addition to being a national correspondent for The New York Times, Fountain also is a former staff writer at the Washington Post and the Chicago Tribune, where he was once that newspaper’s chief crime reporter. His range of work has included covering everything from a lumberjack festival to a presidential campaign; from nightside general assignment reporting to national and international correspondence; from hard news and features, magazine and memoir writing to essay writing and producing serials and series; from print journalism to photography and videography to comprehensive digital storytelling, production and web design. In 2007, he was named Paul Simon Essayist for Illinois Issues Magazine titled, Fountain later also wrote an essay for the magazine titled,

As a journalist, Fountain’s work has appeared in a wide range of publications, including the Dallas Morning News, Atlanta Journal Constitution, Orlando Sentinel, Wilmington Delaware News, Charlotte Observer, Ft. Worth Star Telegram, Biloxi Sun Herald, Seattle Times, Crisis Magazine, Ebony Magazine, Good Housekeeping, Urban Faith, Britain’s Voice and other publications. His professional career includes internships at the Champaign News-Gazette, Pioneer Press Newspapers (suburban Chicago), Chicago Sun-Times, Modesto Bee, The Wall Street Journal and the Chicago Tribune, where he was ultimately hired as a full-time staffer. Faith, the Black Church, and Religion as well as crime, culture and social justice are among the areas his stories, both nationally and internationally, have encompassed—always with an eye for detail and narrative insightful coverage on the human condition as a complete multimedia journalist steeped in the fundamental principles of journalism.

Fountain has been a professor of journalism for the last two decades. Fountain has designed courses on Telling Social Justice Stories, backpack journalism and Literary Journalism and utilized his professional background and resources to bring noted working journalists and public figures into the classroom to enhance and broaden the student learning experience. Also among the classes he teaches are: Beginning and Advanced Reporting; Media Writing; Feature Writing; Memoir Writing; Column Writing and The Personal Essay; Telling Social Justice Stories; Intimate Journalism; the Convergence Journalism Project; and Mobile Journalism & Multimedia Storytelling.

An impassioned professor and decorated veteran journalist, he brings to the classroom a wealth of knowledge and experience from being a cub reporter at a big-city daily newspaper who rose to the ranks of national correspondent at the national newspaper of record. Additionally, he has spearheaded numerous convergence journalism projects focused on social justice issues. Indeed Fountain has led students in producing award-winning work to cover the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, to the issue of murder and homelessness in Chicago, most notably the , a nationally award-winning and critically-acclaimed examination of the murders of 51 mostly African-American women in Chicago, which garnered a first-place National Association of Black Journalists Salute To Excellence Award. He continues to be a contributing member of the faculty, serving on various academic committees and in activities, organizing student project presentations and serving as a judge, keynote speaker and presenter at local and statewide student journalism workshops and beyond in addition to his own public speaking. 

In 2021, Fountain received the �鶹��ý Presidential Social Justice Award for heading a student journalism project on the Unforgotten 51—a multimedia investigative journalism project on the case of 51 murdered women in Chicago, mostly African American.

In 2015, Fountain founded the “Real Men Read Program” at Matteson Elementary School in which men from the surrounding Chicago area read to school-age children on Thursday mornings. The reading/mentoring program, now 10 years old, has brought scores of men from near and far and young men from Southland Charter Prep High School to read to children and has provided $10,000 in scholarships to college-bound Black males. More About the Program: VIDEO 

Professor Fountain continues to be engaged as a professional journalist and columnist and has won numerous awards. In August 2023, Fountain was awarded 1st place in the National Association of Black Journalists “Salute to Excellence Award” in the category of column writing. Fountain was named first place in winner in two separate categories—large newspapers and small newspapers—for work in 2023 for the Chicago Sun-Times and the Chicago Crusader respectively. In 2024, his 50 Cent A Word Substack was a finalist for the Chicago Headline Club's Peter Lisagor Award. In 2024, he is also a finalist in two categories for the NABJ Salute to Excellence Award.

In May 2022 and May 2023, he won 1st place in the Chicago Headline Club's Peter Lisagor Award for Best Column or Editorial From a Large Print/Online Publication. In July 2022, Fountain won a 1st Place National Association of Black Journalists’ “Salute To Excellence Award” for Feature News Series for newspapers under 100,000. In June 2022, he was named 1st Place winner in Social Justice commentary from the ­National Society of Newspaper Columnists; and a 1st place winner for column writing for the Illinois Press Association Media Editors 2021 newspaper contest.

In April 2022, Fountain was named a finalist in three categories for the Chicago Headline Club's Peter Lisagor Award, including as a finalist in the Best Blog Post category for his website, , launched in 2022  while in Ghana, as he chronicled in narrative, photos, video and podcasts during his journey as a Fulbright Scholar. He produced numerous videos, posts and stories also featured on the website. He subsequently won the 1st place Lisagor Award in the combined category of column, editorial and opinion writing.

In Fall 2021, Fountain was named 2nd place winner of the Chicago Journalist Association’s Dorothy Storck Award, and first-place winner of the National Association of Black Journalists’ “Salute To Excellence Award” for column, newspapers under 100,000. He and his students at �鶹��ý were also named a first-place winner of the National Association of Black Journalists’ “Salute To Excellence Award” in Digital Media – Graduate – Best Use of Multimedia – Special Project for a year-long investigative project led by Professor Fountain titled, . In 2016, 2014 and also in 2011, he was the recipient of the Peter Lisagor Award for best news column or commentary at a daily newspaper with a circulation of more than 250,000. He has won numerous other awards throughout his career. His work in the area of social justice also included his prize-winning insightful coverage of the mysterious disappearance and death of Jelani Day, a graduate student at Illinois State University in August 2021, whose body was eventually discovered in the Illinois River miles from campus. Fountain's series on Jelani Day to which he dedicated his column received local, national and international attention.

Professor Fountain was a (1999-2000) Knight-Wallace Fellow at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and a 2009 Knight Digital Multimedia Center Fellow at the University of California-Berkeley.

He was previously a tenured full professor of journalism at his alma mater, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and is a graduate of Providence St. Mel School, Chicago. He often shares his inspirational story of going from poverty and the urban mean streets of Chicago’s West Side to the top of his profession. Fountain is founder of WestSide Press Publishing, Chicago, and is author of five books, including his latest, Soul Cries: In Black & White and Shades of Gray. 

He is a frequent guest commentator on radio and television. His stories and essays continue to appear in news publications across the country and overseas, including his poignant essay “No Place for Me,” on his disenchantment with the “Black Church,” a commentary first published in the Washington Post and subsequently in newspapers across the country.

Fountain grew up on some of the meanest streets in Chicago, where drugs, crime, decay, and broken homes consigned so many black children to a life of despair and self-destruction. A father at 17, a college dropout at nineteen, a welfare case soon after, Fountain was on the verge of giving up all hope. One thing saved him—his faith, his own true vine. He is currently at work on two books: “50 Cent A Word: Diary of A Freed Black Journalist” and “I Love Ghana and Ghana Almost Loved Me: A Fulbright Scholar’s Journey.” He founded FountainWorks, an independent not-for-profit journalism and media company.

IMPACT OF THE UNFORGOTTEN 51

In addition to being published independently online in December 2020, the Unforgotten 51 project was featured in my  column since February , reaching the  in print and a larger regional and national audience online. The project gained regional and national traction with other outlets, garnering a  by Chicago’s WGN News. The effort was noted by the Columbia Journalism Review, spotlighted by e, , the Poynter Institute, the , , , the   ( series by former student Samantha Latson, an editor and reporter on the Unforgotten 51 project), the , WVON radio’s “Talk of Chicago,” and , creating a buzz in other news media outlets and within Black Chicago and beyond. Writes Barbara Allen, of the : “Thanks to the Global Investigative Journalism Network, last week I read “Unforgotten”: Student Journalists Capture the Stories of 51 Women Slain in Chicago. …I love seeing students this invested in a topic and bringing light to tragedies that are too often overlooked by mainstream media.” 

To date, the website has been viewed by more than 100,000 site visitors from more than 19 countries and potentially thousands more who have viewed our project’s videos and podcasts for which analytics either are not readily available or have not yet been computed. Furthermore, countless others have read stories and columns in print and other publications stemming from our coverage of missing and murdered Black women and girls. Still, numbers don’t tell the whole story. For how can one truly measure the impact of the solace and hope brought to families of murder victims whose stories until the Unforgotten 51 project had long been forgotten?

Locally, the  project on murdered Chicago women spurred directly the subsequent creation of a special missing persons unit in the Illinois Cook County Sheriff’s office, according to Sheriff Tom Dart who before its launch requested that Fountain meet with him as well as Commander Dion Trotter, who heads their new missing persons unit, and members of his top brass to discuss the Unforgotten 51 project team’s approach and findings. “John Fountain has been writing at length and (we) found that wildly compelling, so we decided to put our heads together to see if we could add to this effort…” Dart explained during a (11:09 time marker) announcing the launch of the special missing persons unit. 

Because of Fountain’s work with the Unforgotten 51, he was invited to be a keynote speaker by Mothers Opposed to Violence Everywhere, an advocacy group for Black women and girls reported murdered or missing. His voice and expertise made him a sought-after source for producers of movies and documentaries like Discovery+ The Hunt For The Chicago Strangler, although Fountain declined interviews, citing their focus on the serial killer rather than on humanizing the victims.

Following publication of the Unforgotten 51 series, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed into law in August 2021, three key measures sponsored by Illinois State Representative Jacqueline Y. Collins to help fight human trafficking. “In every way that matters, human trafficking is modern-day bondage,” Collins said then. “We know in Chicago, as reported by John Fountain, that the lives, deaths, and disappearances of Black women receive disparate treatment from those of white women. I hope that fighting human trafficking will help us find some of the Black girls and women who have been missing for too long.”

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