Hubert Jessup

Hubert Jessup was a community media leader, television producer, educator, and the 1996 recipient of the ACM’s Sue Miller Buske Leadership Award. His work connected Boston-area public access with a broader career in local television, media literacy, and civic dialogue, placing him among the practitioners who helped community media mature during a critical period of growth and professionalization.

From 1985 to 1996, Hubert served as General Manager of BNN, the Boston Community Access and Programming Foundation. Before that, he created and produced award-winning programs for WCVB-TV in Boston, including New Heaven/New Earth, The Baxters’, and Park Street Under. He also served as president of the New England Chapter and as a national trustee of NATAS, where he helped develop the media literacy project Creating Critical Viewers.

Hubert’s story belongs in Community Media Voices because he understood television as more than programming. Across broadcast, public access, teaching, and media literacy work, he treated media as a civic and educational space — a way for communities to question, participate, learn, and see themselves more clearly.