In February, 2013 Jessica became a Communications Assistant with the City of Calgary’s corporate communications team. She manages The City’s social media channels including The City’s Facebook and Twitter, which has the highest number of followers than any other municipality in Canada. She also produces content for the Calgary City News blog.
In 2011 Jessica graduated from New York University with a master’s degree in journalism. Her program, Reporting the Nation, focused on multi-platform urban reporting. She has reported in places like Philadelphia where she wrote a story about a treatment court for veterans and Detroit, where she reported on the city’s debilitating illiteracy rate for NYU’s award-winning online student newspaper Pavement Pieces .
While living in New York in 2012 she worked for NY1 News, a local 24-hour New York City news station, as a news assistant. She shot b-roll, field produced, conducted interviews, researched and worked as a weekend overnight assignment editor. She gained experience in covering breaking news live and on tight deadlines and was often times the first person from a NY1 crew on scene at many breaking news stories.
Jessica also freelanced and interned for New York Times blogs The Local East Village , SchoolBook and City Room. For The Times she was primarily an education and general assignment reporter covering issues like charter schools, class sizes, the teachers’ union and Manhattan’s East Village.
While she is learning lots in her new position at The City of Calgary Jessica is brand new to Cow Town and spends time trying to figure out everything Calgary has to offer, driving up to Edmonton to visit her high school buds, dreaming about New York and drinking coffee. She is still interested in freelance writing opportunities as that is one of her passions!
Jessica Lynn Bell 