Journalist, editor, storyteller
Selected Journalism Work
EDUCATION IN A PANDEMIC
WLRN News, 2020 - present
COVID-19 hit as the parent-teacher association at a public school near Little Haiti was already facing an existential threat. Subcontracted janitors at a wealthy private university had access to much less personal protective equipment than it appeared in the school's reopening video. This collection examines how the pandemic has affected K-12 and higher education in South Florida.
CHARTERED:
FLORIDA'S FIRST PRIVATE TAKEOVER OF A PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM
WLRN News, 2019
Chartered: Florida's First Private Takeover Of A Public School System is an award-winning hourlong audio documentary and multimedia investigative series examining the state's only all-charter school district, in Jefferson County. The project was also featured in print in the Tampa Bay Times and the Miami Herald.
Jessica Bakeman is Director of Enterprise Journalism at WLRN, South Florida's NPR member station. Bakeman oversees the station's investigations team, and she co-edited the 2023 investigation Unguarded, examining the Guardianship Program of Dade County's real estate sales practices. Since joining WLRN in fall 2017, Bakeman has also served as senior news editor and education reporter.
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Bakeman was the editor and project manager of Class of COVID-19: An Education Crisis for Florida's Vulnerable Students, a 2021 multimedia series from Florida Public Media exploring how the pandemic upended public education statewide. The project won a national Edward R. Murrow Award for excellence in digital.
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In 2020, she was named journalist of the year by the Florida chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.
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Bakeman reported and produced WLRN's 2019 audio documentary and investigative series, Chartered: Florida's First Private Takeover Of A Public School System, which earned a regional Murrow for news documentary and an honorable mention for the inaugural Esserman-Knight Journalism Prize.​
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She won national first-place awards for audio storytelling in 2019 and education beat reporting in 2018 from the Education Writers Association.
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Previously, Bakeman helped establish POLITICO's national network of state capital coverage, serving as an original member of the company's bureaus in both Albany, N.Y., and Tallahassee, Fla. She also covered New York state politics for The Wall Street Journal and USA Today.
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Bakeman is a past president of the Capitol Press Club of Florida, a nonprofit organization that raises money for college scholarships benefiting journalism students. Also, she twice chaired a planning committee for the New York State Legislative Correspondents Association's annual political satire show, the oldest of its kind in the country.
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She earned her bachelor’s degree in journalism and English literature from SUNY Plattsburgh, a public liberal arts college in northeastern New York. She proudly hails from Rochester, N.Y.
As heard and read on:
