About Jackie Spinner

Jackie Spinner's avatar image

is an award-winning American journalist based in the Middle East, where she was a U.S. Fulbright Scholar in Oman for the 2010-2011 academic year. She was recently hired to teach multimedia journalism at Columbia College Chicago, the largest and most diverse private arts and media college in the United States. She will join the faculty in the fall of 2011 as an assistant professor and is starting a hyperlocal for the Arab-American community in Chicago. Jackie was a staff writer for The Washington Post for 14 years and covered the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. She left the Post in 2009 and founded Angel Says: Read, an international literacy project based in Belize, Central America. In 2010, she returned to Iraq to start the award-winning AUI-S Voice, Iraq’s first independent student newspaper at The American University of Iraq--Sulaimani. She taught digital journalism at Sultan Qaboos University in Oman, where she founded Al Mir’ah, the university’s first independent student newspaper. She has contributed to the Christian Science Monitor, Chicago Tribune, Slate, Glamour, Aswat al-Iraq, American Journalism Review, Defense Quarterly Standard and U.S. Catholic News. Jackie is the author of Tell Them I Didn’t Cry: A young journalist’s story of joy, loss and survival in Iraq (Scribner 2006). She has a bachelor's in journalism from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale and a master's in journalism from UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism.

 

Stories

Digital media stories published elsewhere by Jackie Spinner:

  • Sound of Freedom [edit]
    Freedom Radio in Iraq went on the air in 2003 and will sign off in December after 8 years broadcasting from Baghdad.
  • Protests spread to Oman [edit]
    Video story produced in the field for Slate as Arab Spring spread to Oman. Produced with iMovie, Flip and HDZoom recorder.

Writing

Content on this site written by Jackie Spinner (includes contributory writing):

  • Projects

    • Jazzschool
    • Jazzschool offers comprehensive vocal and instrumental instruction in the jazz arts for beginners to experienced professionals.

    • Testimonials

    This was an incredible experience, and I am so grateful that I was selected for this fellowship....I also am excited to teach my students, really teach them.... It was valuable to see how the sessions were taught, and I really can't say enough about how this week inspired me, made me think about the role of news and how to present it and where to reach the readers. I got so much out of being with my fellow journalists, because at the end of the day (before log-out and shut down) I am a journalist first. Thank you, thank you, thank you!