Director, Future of Public Media Project, Center for Social Media, American University

Jessica Clark is researching the evolution of public media, and is also collaborating on a project to document and analyze an emerging national network of independent, progressive media outlets.

Clark has been researching, creating, writing and fighting for independent media for more than a decade. From 2002-09, she worked on every facet of In These Times, a national monthly magazine of news, analysis and cultural reporting, serving as its editor-at-large, executive editor, managing editor, associate publisher and assistant publisher. From late 2001 through 2002, Jessica was the co-editor for LiP Magazine, which championed “dangerous humor, liberated eroticism and informed revolt.” She 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 such organizations as The Free Press and Media Matters for America.

Clark 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 earned an M.A. in Social Sciences and a B.A. in English from the University of Chicago.