storyteller. thinker. educator.
deb, officially

“Behind that sweet smile is a smart, savvy woman who knows how to get things done.”

Deborah D. Douglas is an award-winning journalist and author of The U.S. Civil Rights Trail: A Traveler’s Guide to the People, Places, and Events That Made the Movement. Now in its second edition, the book is the first-ever travel guide to follow the official civil rights trail in the South. She is director of the Medill Solutions Journalism Hub and a faculty member at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, Media and Integrated Marketing Communications and a founding co-editor-in-chief of The Emancipator, a digital platform that reimagined abolitionist newspapers. She also spearheaded the Hub’s Solutions Journalism Rapid Response Kit: The Fire Next Time, which showcases Chicago media as a standard-bearer for response-driven coverage of federal immigration enforcement and other systemic challenges and is among 90 contributors to Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619–2019. Among her many recognitions, she received the Society of American Travel Writers 2021 Guidebook of the Year Award, an Edward R. Murrow Award, and a Studs Terkel Award.

Order the new, second edition here and here.

2019 Studs Terkel Award Winner

Public Narrative’s Studs Terkel Community Media Awards has long honored outstanding media professionals for excellent work in covering Chicago’s diverse communities and beyond. Over 60 journalists have received the award named for one of the country’s preeminent storytellers.

Acceptance Video

“Under the weight of all the evidence of how taxing prejudice is on the average black woman, we can start to make sense of why Erica Garner’s big, generous heart gave out. One way or another, racism, the toxic sludge of American hate, broke it.””
Deborah Douglasin VICE News

“The real malpractice will occur if we, who do this work and believe in the democratizing force of journalism, don’t listen to what these young journalists are trying to tell us about ourselves, our society.”
Deborah Douglasin Gateway Journalism Review

Global

My travels have taken me to Tanzania to study malaria and HIV prevention to Pakistan to teach reporting best practices and Europe to enjoy food, art and culture.

Write

From my civil rights travel book to contributing to “400 Souls,” my writing re-centers the gravity of storytelling around underserved voices and experiences.

Teach

Teaching journalism at the college level — Northwestern University, DePauw University and Columbia College — and facilitating thought leadership trainings has been my joy.

Speak

Unapologetic, honest about the issues. Don’t ask if you don’t want the real answer. (wink)

“Freedom is never given; it is won.”
— A. Philip Randolph

My latest work is writing about traveling the civil rights movement in the “U.S. Civil Rights Trail: A Traveler’s Guide to the People, Places and Events That Made the Movement” (Moon Travel/Hachette Book Group).

storyteller. thinker. educator.
deb, officially

“Behind that sweet smile is a smart, savvy woman who knows how to get things done.”

Order the new, second edition here and here.