Nerissa Young, MAJ

Nerissa Young is a lecturer at Ohio University’s E.W. Scripps School of Journalism and a writer and editor from Forest Hill, West Virginia, with 25 years’ experience in radio, magazines, newspapers and journalism education. She has taught or practiced journalism in Ohio, Oklahoma, Mississippi and West Virginia. Young is the author of “Mass Communication Law in West Virginia, Second Edition,” a book chapter on media law in “Still Captive? History, Law and the Teaching of High School Journalism” and case studies in “Journalism Ethics: A Casebook of Professional Conduct for News Media, Fourth Edition.” She collaborated with Nationwide Children’s Hospital and the Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services to provide a curriculum and web portal with resources to teach journalists the best practices for covering suicide. That workshop has been presented at regional and national conferences. Young has been an active member of the Society of Professional Journalists since 1991 and is the adviser to the award-winning Ohio University chapter.

Young was a co-author of "Newspaper Adherence to Media Reporting Guidelines for the Suicide Deaths of Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain" that was published by the Journal of the American Medical Association in November 2019. The paper received a Sigma Delta Chi Award in Research in Journalism in 2020 from the Society of Professional Journalists.