Jessica Walsh joined the college full time in 2020 and is an assistant professor in the College of Journalism and Mass Communications where she teaches editing and reporting classes.
Jessica researches local, rural and environmental journalism and has a stream of research on teaching editing and Associated Press style in U.S. journalism college classrooms. Jessica's research focuses on rural and local journalists and their roles in a networked community. Some of her published research has included how rural journalists cover hate speech, how they cover the environment and how national and local journalists use social media to report news. Her research has appeared in Newspaper Research Journal, Mass Communication and Society, Journalism Practice, Grassroots Editor and Educational Psychology Review.
Jessica was a reporter for 12 years at news organizations including The Associated Press, The Patriot Ledger and the Boston Herald, where she learned to cultivate sources, turn curiosity into front-page stories, dig for public records and relentlessly knock on doors. She won several regional press awards including a share in one for breaking news and another for a series of stories about a Boston plastic surgeon who was accused of operating while impaired. She also led the Boston Herald’s effort to get the Massachusetts state parole board to make its votes public. In 2021, a story she wrote for the Omaha World-Herald on nitrate contamination in Nebraska's groundwater won an award from the North American Agricultural Journalists. In 2020, she was selected as a faculty fellow at the Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute.
Jessica received a bachelor's degree in news editorial and a master's degree in professional journalism, both from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She is a Ph.D. student at UNL's Agricultural, Leadership, Education and Communication program.
Jessica lives with her three children and her husband, Mike. She is on the board of the Friends of Pioneers Park Nature Center, where she supports one of Lincoln’s great natural resources. She is a proud alumna of the Daily Nebraskan.