National Journalist, Author To Speak In Chapel

by Amanda Lewis, Student Newswriter

Former New York Times correspondent and author John W. Fountain will address Baylor University students in Chapel at 10 and 11 a.m. Monday, Nov. 8, in Waco Hall.
Early life experiences in a rough Chicago neighborhood compelled Fountain to cling to his Christian faith in order to escape a life of drugs, crime and broken homes. He refused to fall into a stereotype to which his childhood friends had succumbed.
Fountain overcame his difficult circumstances and used education as a stepping-stone to a prestigious career. Upon graduating from high school, he received a bachelor's and master's degree from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana and pursued a career involving a variety of avenues from youth ministry to journalism.
Previously employed as a reporter at the Chicago Tribune and The Washington Post, he currently serves as a professor at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. Fountain also has published a living memoir, True Vine, of how faith and determination redirected his life.
"True Vine is about family, community, overcoming poverty. And it is about faith. Real faith. A living faith more than an institutional faith," Fountain said. "I learned that real faith is found not in the tangible, but in the ability to see beyond circumstances, no matter how bleak, and to observe oneself through the prism of possibility. From hard times to The New York Times, this book is my personal testimony."
For more information visit Fountain's web site at www.johnwfountain.com . Chapel can be viewed live on the web at www.baylor.edu/um .