While at the university, she worked as sports writer for The Red & Black, the student newspaper, and wrote a story about a football player who had been 'illegally recruited'.
She left the Macon Telegraph in May 1984, and began working at the Orlando Sentinel as a sports copy-editor.
The pair investigated and found that athletes received preferential treatment.
For two years, from 1987 to 1989, she worked at Ivanhoe Communications as 'Special Projects Director' and held the same position at KSTP-TV in Saint Paul, Minnesota, from 1989 to 1994.
[1][3][5] At the Star-Tribune, Jackie was the business reporter in 2016, writing about "the impact that aging baby boomers and rising millennials are having on the economy, health care system and workplace".