Melissa Bell

Melissa Bell (MSJ06) was inducted into Medill’s Hall of Achievement in 2025.

Bell is the CEO of Chicago Public Media, the nonprofit news organization working to create a healthy local news infrastructure for the Chicago region, including the Chicago Sun-Times newspaper, WBEZ’s 91.5 radio station, and Vocalo, the digital music station.

Before coming to Chicago Public Media, Bell was the co-founder of Vox and served as the publisher of Vox Media, overseeing its stable of publications. Under her leadership, Vox Media’s platforms reached up to 130 million people each month, gained 350 million social media followers, and earned 6 billion monthly video views and 36 million monthly podcast downloads.

She also previously worked at The Washington Post as director of platforms. In 2023, she served as a visiting fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University, where she studied the impact of news avoidance on local journalism in the United States.