Storytelling Without Borders: Sulaiman Folarin’s International Journalism Journey

YOU KNOW IT'S A GOOD STORY WHEN A 6,000-MILE JOURNEY ISN'T EVEN THE MOST INTERESTING PART. And second-generation journalist Sulaiman Folarin (C’05), whose journey spans continents and media properties, knows a thing or two about telling a story.

For Folarin, reporting relevant and riveting stories is a passion dating back to childhood. “My father was one of the first people on television in Nigeria in the 1960s,” he recalls. “So, I grew up watching my dad report the news.” 

Folarin’s first break came while he was still a teen. “I auditioned for a radio station in Nigeria and was chosen out of 3,000 folks,” he says. That audition led to another, and before long, he was co-hosting a successful television show ... all by the age of 20. That’s when he embarked on that 6,000-mile journey that culminated at Principia College. 

“I left all of that [co-hosting job] to start all over again,” pursuing a mass communications and sociology double major at Principia. While Folarin was focused on studying, his talent still attracted the spotlight. After a classmate urged Folarin to submit his class assignment to the Chicago Sun-Times, he became the city’s hip-hop columnist at a time when all eyes were on Chicago’s hip-hop scene. 

The next decade of his work features some of America’s biggest media names: the Sun-Times, CNN, BET, Rolling Stone, and ESPN.  

But the more Folarin covered American culture, the more he felt something was missing. While his native Nigeria has long been a mecca for Africa’s diverse collection of cultures and societies, “There was no storytelling about the rich history of our people,” Folarin laments. “I saw a void and tapped into it.” 

Now an established documentarian, Folarin is shining a spotlight on African contributions to international sport. His 2021 documentary The Three Kings of the UFC explores the rise and dominance of three African UFC fighters, and he is now finishing up a feature-length documentary about Tobi Amusan, Nigeria’s world-record hurdler. 

“Even before I came to Principia, I believed the sky is not your limit,” Folarin asserts. “The sky is your starting point. You don’t have any limits—­you only have limits when you tell yourself you have limits.” Judging from Folarin’s story so far, this one has no limits at all.