Mississippi Delta reporter

Jaylin R. Smith

Making funny videos and engaging audiences for prospects were skills Jaylin Smith learned from her graduate experience at the University of Mississippi in Journalism and New Media. While receiving her Master’s degree, the scholar worked as a graduate assistant for the Overby Center for Southern Journalism and Politics. There, Smith started her career as a multimedia journalist and researcher, presenting her work at conferences for the Broadcast Education Association and the Association of Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. Her love for diversity and passion for representation and visibility of Black culture allowed her to be chosen as a 2024 TEDx Speaker, giving a talk about the importance of respecting Black women’s hair. Smith’s strong foundation for journalistic excellence and community involvement began at her beloved HBCU, Mississippi Valley State University. Leading up to her role as the Delta reporter at the Mississippi Free Press, Smith worked as a car saleswoman at Cannon Chevrolet in her hometown of Greenwood, Miss.

Mississippi Free Press

The mission of the Mississippi Free Press, a nonprofit statewide newsroom, is to publish deep public-interest reporting into causes of and solutions to the social, political, and systemic challenges facing all Mississippians and their communities. We interrogate and report the systems that cause inequities on the road to lasting solutions through a mixture of narrative storytelling, data reporting, historic context and community dialogue through solution circles in under-reported communities to discover report causes and roots of inequities, followed by solutions journalism.