John Wesley Fountain
Professor of Journalism
Roosevelt University
Journalism/Communication/Arts and Sciences
|
|
|
| Office |
Chicago Campus |
| Room |
505C
(Gage Bldg.)
|
| Phone |
312-281-3240
|
| Hours |
Monday, 11-2; Tuesday 3-6; Otherwise by appointment
|
| E-mail |
jfountain@roosevelt.edu |
|
| Classes Taught |
Journalism 220 - Media Writing
Journalism 449 - Personal Journalism (Memoir-Essay Writing)
Journalism 356/456 - Literary Journalism
Journalism 392 - Convergence NewsroomClick here to browse my folders and files
|
|
| Research Interests |
Poverty and Public Affairs Reporting
The Contemporary African-American Church
Urban Crime and Homicide
|
|
| Biography |
JOHN WESLEY FOUNTAIN
A native son of Chicago, John W. Fountain is an award-winning journalist, professor and author of the memoir, True Vine: A Young Black Man’s Journey of Faith Hope and Clarity (Public Affairs, 2003), paperback March 2005. In a journalism career that has spanned 20 years, Fountain has written for the Wall Street Journal, Chicago Sun-Times, Modesto Bee, Pioneer Press Newspapers in suburban Chicago and the Champaign News-Gazette.
Until July 2003, he was a national correspondent for The New York Times, based in its Midwest bureau in Chicago. He has been a staff writer at the Washington Post and the Chicago Tribune.
A full professor with tenure, he began teaching at Roosevelt University this fall. Since 2004, Fountain had taught at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana, where he was a tenured full professor. He has been a visiting scholar/lecturer at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.
In addition to working as a national correspondent, Fountain has been a crime and courts reporter as well as a general assignment reporter and features writer. Described by peers and readers as a gifted storyteller, Fountain has won the praise of colleagues and the community for his insightful writing and reporting. Fountain has won numerous honors for writing from the National Association of Black Journalists, the Associated Press, the American Association of University Women, the Society of Professional Journalists, and also the New York Time’s Publisher’s Award for his coverage of the Mississippi River flood, among others. In 2003, he was a finalist in feature and sports writing for the Peter Lisagor Award for excellence in journalism.
Fountain frequently speaks to inner-city youths and other groups. He 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 earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In 1999, Fountain was one of 12 American journalists selected for the prestigious Michigan Journalism Fellowship for the 1999-2000 class at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Fountain studied inner-city poverty and race.
True Vine is his remarkable story—of his childhood in a neighborhood heading south; of his strong-willed grandparents, who founded a church (called True Vine) that sought to bring the word of God to their neighbors; of his mother, herself a teenage parent, whose truncated dreams helped nurture bigger dreams in him; of his friends and cousins, whose youthful exuberance was extinguished by the burdens they faced; and of his religious awakening that gave him the determination to rebuild his life.
Fountain’s return to Chicago in 2000 as a national correspondent for The New York Times marked how his story has come full circle, this time in triumph. True Vine is an inspiring, moving, gripping story of one man’s American dream—a dream that all of us can share.
Fountain’s stories and essays continue to appear in news publications across the country and include his poignant essay, “No Place for Me" on his disenchantment with the "Black Church," a commentary first published in July 2005 in the Washington Post, sparking discussions around the country. His essay entitled, “The God Who Embraced Me,” aired on National Public Radio’s “This I Believe” and appears in a book bearing the name of the NPR series (This I Believe, Henry Holt, 2006; paperback September 2007). Other essayists include Colin Powell, Gloria Steinem and Bill Gates.
Fountain was selected as the second Paul Simon essayist for Illinois Issues Magazine and has recently completed an essay on poverty that appeared in the magazine’s May 2007 edition and that will be released as a monograph in fall 2007.
Fountain is an ordained minister with Pentecostal roots. He grew up in the Church of God In Christ and later became a youth minister at True Vine Church of God in Christ, where his grandfather, the Reverend George A. Hagler, still pastors in Bellwood, Illinois.
Fountain and his wife, Monica—also a writer-journalist and daughter of a Baptist pastor—and their two children live in the south suburbs of Chicago. |
|
| Current Project - iWrite A Dream |
About iWriteaDream:
Each day, American journalism presents the menu of news, events, people and places it believes most important to the lives of Americans. Today’s stories become tomorrow’s history. Those stories help shape opinions, attitudes and perceptions. But each day, many stories often go missing, particularly stories about minority communities and the poor. Or the journalism is too often jaded by the perceptions and preconceived notions of the reporters who write their stories from the outside looking in—as the occasional tourist rather than as resident/inhabitant who might present a fuller, richer, perhaps more complete, and yet, no less complex portrait of the people, the problems and even the possibilities of a place.
Most often conspicuously absent from the voices and portraits of communities presented by daily journalism are the voices and perspectives of children and teens. Theirs is a unique perspective—less seasoned with the salt of political correctness and cynicism. And yet, theirs is a perspective rich with candor and resonant with the kind of truth that can prove to be a refreshing and enlightening addition to the landscape of American journalism and beyond.
(copy and paste Web address below to visit site)
www.iwadpembroke.blogspot.com
|
|
| Literary Journalism - Jour 356/456 |
About this course:
This course acquaints students with the area of literary journalism, which serves as a forum for the expression of journalism as narrative. Combining the seminar and workshop forum, this course explores the art and craft of literary nonfiction as well as the structure, tone, style and approach to writing feature stories, giving special attention to some of the nation’s leading journalists and introducing students to the process of immersing themselves in the subject. This is an advanced course in writing intended to help the student hone ideas and to shape them into thoughtful, well-written pieces for publication. The focus of this course is the intersection between journalism and literature with the additional aim of introducing students to technologies of news gathering and storytelling available to the contemporary literary journalist.
To see a sampling of the work produced by students in Literary Journalism, visit the course Web site by copying and pasting the following link into your Web browser:
www.literaryjourn.blogspot.com |
|
|
|
Roosevelt University
Chicago 430 S. Michigan Ave, Chicago, IL 60605
Schaumburg
1400 N. Roosevelt Blvd, Schaumburg, IL 60173 |
|
