Jessica Clark -- Staff Bios-- Center for Social Media at American University

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Staff Bios Jessica Clark

Jessica Clark directs the center’s Future of Public Media project.

In addition, she is the editor-at-large of In These Times, a national monthly magazine of news, analysis and cultural reporting. Since 2002, she has worked on nearly every facet of the magazine, serving as its executive editor, managing editor, associate publisher and assistant publisher; overseeing the transition to its current monthly format; coordinating special issues and events; and working on strategic planning, circulation growth and outreach.

She is also working in tandem with Tracy Van Slyke, program director of The Media Consortium, to document and foster an emerging national network of independent, progressive media outlets. Together they co-author a blog on the evolution and impact of this sector, Build the Echo, and are working on a related book for The New Press.

Jessica has been researching, creating, writing and fighting for independent media since the late ’90s. She helped to bring Stay Free! magazine’s controversial and widely covered exhibit, Illegal Art: Freedom of Expression in the Corporate Age, to Chicago. She has served on the steering committee for the Midwest office of the Independent Press Association, and has worked on a wide variety of media activism efforts with organizations like The Media Consortium and Media Matters for America.

As a co-editor and writer for LiP Magazine from late 2001 to 2002, Jessica helped to broaden the magazine’s audience by transitioning the publication to the Web. During that time, LiP—which championed “dangerous humor, liberated eroticism and informed revolt”—was nominated for an Utne Independent Press Award in the “Best Online Cultural Coverage” category.

Jessica has also held editorial positions at Britannica.com, the Library of Congress, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and marketing positions at the Field Museum and the University of Chicago Press. She holds an MA in Social Sciences and a BA in English from the University of Chicago.