After 14 years of teaching at DePaul, senior journalist in residence Chris Bury is retiring at the end of this academic year.

“I’ve been doing this job for 14 years and really have enjoyed it, especially my interactions with students,” Bury said. “But my wife has been retired for a couple of years now, and we want to do some more traveling, especially international traveling, and this is really the time in our lives when we have to do it.”

Bury started out as a political science student at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, Illinois. During student protests against the Vietnam War, Bury recorded the demonstrations and sent them to Chicago’s WLS radio station, who paid him for the recordings. 

“That was the moment where I thought, ‘Wow, I could get paid for this,’” Bury said.

Throughout his degree, Bury continued working at student radio stations in Carbondale. After graduating, he worked at a radio station in Wisconsin and eventually got his master’s degree at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, also in political science. 

Bury proceeded to work at various news outlets, including Al Jazeera and WTMJ-TV in Milwaukee. He is best known for his work as a correspondent and anchor with ABC News Nightline, a late-night TV news program. Throughout his career, Bury covered Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign, the war in Afghanistan, cartels in Mexico, the Gulf Wars, uprisings in Haiti and more.  

Bury’s colleague at ABC News Andy Fies said Bury’s writing was a rare combination of insightful and fast.

“He remains one of the best writers ABC ever employed,” Fies said. “He was a terrific reporter to begin with. His questions were always insightful and incisive, and his writing was the same, insightful, incisive, even poetic at times.”

Shortly before Bury’s contract at ABC News ended, former dean of DePaul’s College of Communication Jacqueline Taylor reached out to him and asked if he was interested in teaching, and Bury accepted the job.

“I wasn’t sure, but I talked to some people at DePaul, and they convinced me that it was a good move, and so I took the job,” Bury said. “I didn’t really think that I would stay for 14 years, but I really liked teaching. So I just decided I would stay since I was enjoying it.”

Bury’s students knew him as a strict journalist dedicated to his students.

“A deadline’s a deadline, but he’s just so kind, and the way he speaks to you, it’s never condescending. He just knows what he’s talking about,” said Francesca Corona, a senior journalism student.

Caitlin Walsh, a first-year graduate journalism student, took Bury’s investigative journalism class in her first quarter at DePaul. She said even after the quarter ended, he worked with her team to make sure their story was published.

“He was still my teacher even after the class ended,” Walsh said.

Former students and colleagues of Bury’s also said he called out injustice without being biased.

“If something was wrong, he’d say so,” said Barbara Pinto, who was Bury’s former colleague at ABC News. “He was not one to make his personal views known. He was very fair-minded.”

Brendan Pedersen, a former student of Bury’s who is currently a senior reporter for Punch Bowl News in Washington, D.C., said Bury had a “unique moral clarity.”

“When someone in politics does something heinous, I’ve often seen him as one of the first journalists who call it out on his Twitter,” Pedersen said.

Among his favorite classes to teach were investigative and political reporting. Bury took his classes to cover the Iowa caucuses in the 2020 and 2024 elections.

“I’ve really enjoyed teaching students how to come up with records, how to find court cases, how to find different kinds of government documents, and build a story that relies on in-depth reporting in enterprise,” Bury said.

Walsh said Bury taught her the purpose of investigative journalism was to help those who are “voiceless and marginalized.” 

“It’s not just to keep power in account, but it’s really to serve people who have been harmed by bureaucratic systems,” Walsh said.

He said he wants to travel internationally with his wife during his retirement.

“A lot of places I’ve been, I want to go back to,” Bury said. “But I want to go back as someone who is just an ordinary tourist, not under deadline to produce a story.”

Though retiring from teaching, Bury said he wants to continue practicing journalism using Substack or YouTube, or pursuing work in consulting. Bury said he hopes students remember the essence of journalism throughout their careers.

“I hope they remember the most important words in journalism are ‘go there.’ Journalism is not all that complicated. You have to talk to people and get the best version of the truth,” Bury said. “And the best part of our journalism is you never stop learning, which is what I love.”

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