Chicago Journalist Carol Marin to be Keynote Speaker at SoC Commencement 

May 2012

Political columnist at the Chicago Sun-Times, political editor at NBC5, and contributor for WTTW’s Chicago Tonight, Carol Marin describes her career in journalism as “the perfect calling.” 

Marin is set to be commencement speaker for the School of Communication’s graduation ceremony May 2012.  Though she has not developed her speech, she stressed that “ethics will always be part of the conversation.”

Born and raised in Chicago, Ill., Marin’s exposure to news and politics was fostered by “working-class” parents of divided faith and political ideology.

 “They were really both tremendously self-educated,” Marin said.  “My dad was a republican and fallen away Baptist. My mother was democrat and devout Catholic, so every night at dinner was kind of a verbal food fight.”

One thing they did agree on was the importance of newspapers to daily life. 

 “Back in the days when Chicago had four newspapers, even if money was tight, we always had money to buy each newspaper every day.”

Studying English at the University of Illinois, Marin described her role on the debate team as her “most important college experience,” learning fundamental skills that would later benefit her reporting career.  

“You have to research multiple sides of a story, you have to be able to argue the affirmative and the negative-- you have to be able to cross examine to find the weaknesses and the flaws in somebody’s argument. I think debate more than virtually anything taught me new thinking skills.” 

Graduating in 1970, Marin spent a year and a half teaching at Dundee High School, but moved to Tennessee in 1972 where her husband, Jonathan Utley, was teaching at the University of Knoxville. 

Unable to find work teaching, Marin auditioned for a position as a talk show host at WBIR-TV on a dare from Utley and landed the job. 

“The Carol Utley Show” lasted two years before Marin joined the newsroom. 

“They were looking for lighter, fluffier material and I wasn’t giving them that.  I brought the Klan on-- one day I brought prison wardens, that kind of thing, and they didn’t think it was morning talk show fair,” Marin explained.  “They said, this isn’t working out, you’ve got to go to the news room and it was in the newsroom that I began to do reporting and anchoring.” 

In 1976, Marin moved to WSM-TV in Nashville where she was the main anchor and reporter for the 6 o’ clock news.  She had turned down several other jobs, including one in Chicago.   

“The news director in Nashville, Mike Kettenring was an extraordinary newsman and said you’ve got to come here. I knew I was going there the minute I talked to Kettenring,” Marin said. 

There, Marin’s investigative reporting on then Tennessee Governor Ray Blanton was her “big story.”

“He was selling pardons and parole. It was my first governor to go to prison.” 

This peaked Chicago’s interest once again, and in 1978, Marin was hired by NBC’s WMAQ-TV.  In 1985, she was promoted to anchor of the 10:00 newscast, a position she held until 1997.

 In a team with producer Don Moseley, Marin went on to be a correspondent at CBS News where she worked on 60 Minutes, 60 Minutes II, and 48 Hours until 2002.  Two months after ending at CBS, Moseley and Marin started an independent documentary company, Marin Corp Productions, now housed at DePaul University. 

“We decided we were going to work for ourselves,” Marin said.  Marin and Moseley produced documentaries for news organizations like CNN, New York Times/Discovery, and NBC. 

In 2003, Marin started writing a weekly column for the Chicago Tribune, but became a political columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times in 2004.  Now working for three major news organizations, Marin finds that “each position informs the other.” 

Through the course of her journalism career, Marin has won two George Foster Peabody awards, two DuPont-Columbia awards and two national Emmys.  Reflecting on her career, Marin cannot cite a highpoint. 

“There is no just one thing, there truly isn’t.  We’ve spent a long time covering politics and organized crime. A lot of what we do functions on a continuum,” she explained. “For 20 years we tracked the facially disfigured and we stay with stories-- maybe not every day or every month, but we sort of develop a portfolio of things that we really think are important.” 

“I give journalism students this speech all the time-- for the privilege of being a journalist, you don’t belong to any organization, you don’t give campaign contributions, you don’t sign a petition.  Not all reporters agree with this, but I take a pretty conservative position about it,” Marin said.  “I believe in it like I believe in a religion.”