Jerry Shell - Copy Editor / Page Designer / Bristol Herald Courier

Email: jshell@bristolnews.com

Jerry Shell is a copy editor and page designer who joined the Herald Courier in 1981. He specializes in layout and headline and caption writing for local and wire pages in the paper's news sections.

Shell was raised in Carter County, Tenn., and is a 1971 graduate of Elizabethton High School. After graduation, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy and served aboard the USS Drum, a nuclear-powered fast-attack submarine, as a torpedoman's mate. After four years of active duty, Shell joined the Navy's active reserves, concluding his military service with a billet at the Naval Weapons Station in Yorktown, Va.

Shell is a 1980 graduate of East Tennessee State University, earning a bachelor's of science degree in mass communications. At ETSU, he was on the staff of the school's student newspaper, the East Tennessean, where he held positions as a reporter, news editor and managing editor.

Before joining the Bristol paper, Shell was a news reporter and layout editor for the Johnson City Press and a news layout editor for the Kingsport Times-News.

He has won numerous awards from Virginia's and Tennessee's press associations, most recently second place for headline writing in the 2007 Tennessee Press Association's Group IV competition, the category for the state's largest newspapers.

Shell is a member of the Society for News Design, an international organization for professionals who work in the news sector of the media industry.