Joe Mathewson’s resume reads less like a CV and more like a tour of American public life. He enjoys lifelong learning in Chicago!
Wall Street Journal correspondent. Television journalist. Press secretary to Illinois Governor Richard Ogilvie. Corporate attorney. Cook County Commissioner. And for nearly 30 years, a professor at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, where he teaches media law and ethics to hundreds of students who have gone on to shape American journalism.
At 49 floors above downtown, Mathewson’s residence at The Clare offers a sweeping view of the city he’s spent decades covering and serving. Nine years into living here, he’s not watching Chicago from a distance. He’s still very much in it.
A Career Built on Curiosity
Mathewson’s path to Northwestern – and to The Clare – winds through some of the defining institutions of 20th-century American public life. After serving as a Navy officer, he joined the Wall Street Journal, where over six years he covered the Supreme Court, Congress, and the business world from Chicago, New York, and Washington. From there, he moved into television at WBBM-TV, Chicago’s CBS affiliate, before stepping into the governor’s press office and eventually the University of Chicago Law School.
He practiced corporate and banking law in Chicago for a decade before pivoting again — this time to the classroom.
“I’ve written five books,” he says, with trademark humility. The most notable, The Indispensable Conflict: The Supreme Court and the Press, was published by Northwestern University Press in 2011 and remains a touchstone in the field. “I’m very proud of that one.”
His teaching philosophy is anything but passive. Each quarter, he conducts individual conferences with every one of his students, usually around 35. He invites working journalists – many of them Medill graduates – to address topics in real time, tying the week’s subject matter to what’s actually happening in courtrooms and newsrooms. When a federal judge recently dismissed a high-profile media lawsuit for failure to state a cause of action, Mathewson was already thinking about how he’d weave it into the fall syllabus.
“The underlying principles of good journalism haven’t changed,” he says. “The law is the same. Ethical, fact-based, multisource journalism. That’s the obligation. And I don’t want to see any cracks in those walls.”
The City as a Classroom. The Clare as a Base.
When Mathewson decided it was time to start looking for a new residence, The Clare was already familiar. Fourth Presbyterian Church (just two blocks away on Michigan Avenue) had sent some of its programs to The Clare during a major renovation, and Mathewson had been in the building more than once before he ever thought of it as home. When he began looking seriously, his four children toured apartments with him.
“My kids were equally enthusiastic,” he says. “It was an easy decision.”
What he didn’t anticipate was the caliber of the community he was joining.
“I didn’t even think about who the people are I will be living with,” he admits. “We’re very interesting people. Nobody’s just sitting around. People are keeping up with the news, circulating in the city, traveling. The experience in business and all kinds of professions here is enormous.”
Joe easily found his people and even organized a small informal group of former journalists in the building. They gather every couple of months in The Abbey on 53, the penthouse event space on the 53rd floor, for pizza and a press film. They’ve watched Spotlight, All the President’s Men, The Front Page. It’s his doing, though he’s modest about it.
“I seemed responsible for it,” he says. “But it didn’t take much conversation to get some people interest.”
He also contributed a series of articles to The Clare’s resident-written monthly newsletter & blogs – a publication he describes with visible admiration. “Twenty, thirty pages. Published like clockwork. People write about their travels, their interests. It’s just interesting people writing about interesting things, and it’s fantastic.”
The Case Against Waiting
When asked what he’d say to someone still professionally active who hesitates at the idea of a move like this, Mathewson is direct.
“The Clare doesn’t discourage working,” he says. “It encourages intellectual endeavor. And it makes so many details of daily life easier. You really do exist in a kind of bubble, in the best sense. You’re freed up to focus on whatever you care about.”
Earlier this year, Mathewson experienced a health episode that required hospitalization at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, just steps from The Clare. After his discharge, he transitioned directly to The Clare’s skilled care for continued monitoring and recovery. It’s exactly the situation The Clare’s continuum of care is built for.
The Clare’s care team includes nurses, certified nurse assistants, nutritionist and therapists (physical, occupational, speech and respiratory) to help residents recover and return to their independent living homes as fast as safely possible. Joe returned to his own residence within days.
“They watched over me very closely,” he says. “And I was very anxious to get back to my apartment, which I did.”
It’s a story worth telling not as a cautionary note, but as an illustration of exactly what The Clare is designed to provide: the freedom to live fully, with the assurance that support is built into the architecture of the community.
One More Quarter. Still Looking Ahead & Lifelong Learning In Chicago
Today, Joe is looking ahead to what he hopes will be one final teaching quarter this fall – completing, at last, a full 30 years at Medill. After that, the plan is characteristically open-ended.
“I’ve been casting about for a book idea,” he says. “That would be ideal, to find the idea, get a publisher, and focus on something new and exciting.”
There’s no blueprint for what comes next. Just curiosity, and a city full of material.
For Joe Mathewson, that’s always been enough. At The Clare, he’s perfectly positioned for wherever his next story takes him.