Jennifer Shea

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Location
Chicago Area
School
Scripps College
Expertise
Classic Cinema, Climate Change, Animals
  • Jennifer got her start in journalism at age 15 reporting arts & entertainment and feature stories for a local alt-monthly. While there, she got the chance to interview iconic Chicago weatherman Tom Skilling, alternative rock band Fuel and the stars of "Simon Birch," among many others.
  • Jennifer's reporting for various local newspapers has taken her onto a sailboat in the choppy waters of Lake Michigan, behind the picket lines of striking Grayslake public-school teachers, and into packed auditoriums from Vernon Hills to Hoffman Estates for raucous public meetings on marijuana legalization.
  • She is passionate about animal rights in general and cats in particular (she is a big fan of declawing bans), having worked for an animal rights nonprofit, contributed to various humane societies and rescued two cats herself.

Experience

Jennifer has worked for several weekly community newspapers in Chicago. She has reported on local politics and events for the Niles Bugle, and written feature stories for Forest & Bluff Magazine and North Shore Weekend. As a writer for the Daily Herald, she covered a broad range of local news stories in the Chicago suburbs, as well as community features. She also reported for 22nd Century Media, which owned small local newspapers in towns outside Chicago, before it folded during the pandemic.

Education

Jennifer attended Scripps College in Claremont, California, where she served as a reporter and associate editor on the student newspaper. Among many learning experiences there, including a dispute between the student newspaper and a college dean over a story she broke, she learned the importance of dissecting pop culture with a critical eye.
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Stories By Jennifer Shea