Renee Ferguson, the first African American woman to work as an investigative reporter in Chicago television and a long-time journalist for WMAQ, has died, her family told NBC Chicago. She passed away Friday at 75.
Ferguson is remembered as one of the most impactful journalists in the profession, a job she called a "privilege" and "a great responsibility." She began working at NBC Chicago in 1987.
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WATCH HERE"Renee Ferguson left an incredible echo in our newsroom that still rings through the DNA of our investigative journalism, and that legacy will continue," said Kevin Cross, president and general manager of NBCU Local Chicago.
Among her many honors, Ferguson was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University and won the prestigious duPont–Columbia Award from Columbia University. She was also a member of Chicago's National Association of Black Journalists chapter.
After years of award-winning work, Ferguson retired from NBC Chicago in December 2008.
"Renee considered herself a voice for people who otherwise weren't heard," said Frank Whittaker, retired station manager and vice president of news for NBC Chicago. "She would uncover wrongdoing and fight tirelessly to make it right. She was a true champion for people who had nowhere else to turn. And she got results."
"She was a relentless advocate of the truth," Cross said, "and she was just as much an advocate for the people she worked with."
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NBC Chicago's last interview with Ferguson was in 2023 for the station's 75th anniversary. During the conversation, she shared career highlights and how she treasured being an investigator and a storyteller.
"All journalism really should be investigative, in my opinion," she said at the time. "That's really what the First Amendment gives us. And it's a privilege, but it's also a great responsibility to be correct, to get the facts right, to always be fair and to understand that you're dealing with humanity, that you're dealing with human beings."
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SIGN UP With that responsibility, came pressure to get the story right.
"As a Black woman and the only Black woman doing investigative reporting and the first in the city, pretty much in the nation, it had to be right," she said. "There could be no mistakes, there could be no errors.
Everything had to be exactly right. And the facts had to drive us. Good storytelling, of course, and good writing, but the facts had to drive the story."
When asked which of her award-winning stories still stuck with her, years after retirement, she recalled her coverage on Black women being strip-searched at O'Hare Airport, which earned her the duPont.
"Ultimately there were congressional hearings on those procedures, and the search procedures were rewritten," she recalled. "And after 9/11, those procedures were what they put into place for everyone."
Ferguson was also influential in the exoneration of Tyrone Hood, who was wrongly convicted of killing a college basketball star.
"On my very last story," she said, "I talked about how disappointed I was I wasn't able to get him out. And after a couple of years, Pat Quinn ran for mayor, Gov. Pat Quinn ran for governor. I thought, 'Oh, he could let Tyrone Hood out of prison.' And he did."
"It was the very last thing that he did on the last day of his job, because I had called him at the last minute," she recalled. "But the point is, is that when you see something that's really wrong, when you see a wrong that has been done, you got to say something. You got to do something."
