In These Times

As an editor for In These Times since 1984, Salim Muwakkil has forged a reputation as one of the country’s most insightful writers on issues of African-American culture and politics. He is also a Crime and Communities Media Fellow of the Open Society Institute.

Currently, Muwakkil is working on a documentary titled Chicago Gangs: An American Story and writing the text for a book of photographs documenting the tenure of Harold Washington, Chicago’s first black mayor.

Muwakkil started his journalism career as reporter for the Associated Press in Newark, New Jersey shortly before graduating from Rutgers University with a BA in Political Science. He soon moved on to become a copy editor and then managing editor at Muhammad Speaks-Bilalian News, the largest black-owned publication in the country.

Upon moving to Chicago, Muwakkil joined In These Times’ staff and became a contributing columnist to both the Chicago Sun-Times and the Chicago Tribune.

Muwakkil has also written for the Washington Post, Chicago Reader, The Progressive, Newsday, Cineaste, Chicago Magazine, the Baltimore Sun, Z Magazine, the Toronto Star, Emerge Magazine, The Black Scholar, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and Utne Reader.

Muwakkil is a frequent contributor to “Chicago Tonight” and “Beyond the Beltway” with Bruce Damont, two Chicago-based public affairs programs. He is also an occasional host on Chicago’s black talk radio station, WVON.

Muwakkil has won a variety of journalism awards including the “Top Ten Media Heroes of 1994,” from the Institute of Alternative Journalism, the “Black Rose Achievement Award for 1997,” from the League of Black Women, the 2001 Studs Terkel Award for Journalistic Excellence from the Chicago-based Community Media Workshop and the 2004 Lillian Award for Excellence in Journalism, Delta Sigma Theta Sorority.

In his spare time, Muwakkil serves as a board member for the Progressive Media Project and the Chicago-based Public Square. He is a faculty member of the Associated Colleges of the Midwest’s Urban Studies Program, and a former adjunct professor at Columbia College, Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.