May Update

JESS Is Here!

After more than a year of testing and development, JESS made its debut last week. JESS is an AI-driven chat bot and safety planning guide that provides best-in-class safety information to journalists everywhere, including freelancers and low resourced news organizations. You can read more about the launch here, and there’s also coverage in Columbia Journalism Review. Please sign up here to take JESS for a test drive.

In our next phase of development we will be adding tools and resources including video tutorials and webinars to help JESS reach the broadest audiences. Ultimately our goal is to democratize safety information by making it available to everyone, regardless of resources. JESS is currently optimized for use by journalists working in the United States. Our other goal over the next few months is to expand the knowledge base to include information essential to journalists working anywhere in the world. We want JESS to become a truly global resource.

What can you do? Here are three things.

• Log on and use JESS: Tell us what you think – you can write to me or Kate with your feedback. Most AI products capture tons of information about their users which is great for development but terrible for privacy. When you use JESS, all of your interactions are private by design – and we have no way of knowing about your experience. This is why we are asking you to be in touch.
• Become a tester: We need about 30 to 50 users who are using JESS in the real world to provide detailed feedback about their experience and to help us make improvements. If that's you, please reach out.
• Share JESS with your community: We need your help making sure JESS reaches the journalists who need it. Please share JESS with your network. If you run a Journalism Support Organization and would like us to provide a tutorial on JESS for your members please let us know.

JESS is a partnership between the Journalism Protection Initiative and the ACOS Alliance, with funding from the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation. We are grateful to all those who supported JESS’s development, including the leadership at the Newmark J-School.

Visiting Fellow from Mongolia

We were delighted to host Egiimaa Tsolmonbaatar, known as Iggy, as a JPI visiting fellow this past month. Iggy is a researcher at the Mongolian Center for Investigative Reporters and came to New York through the Professional Fellows Program, supported by the US State Department. Her work focuses on disinformation and foreign influence operations. During her fellowship, she researched how AI can be used to detect and counter disinformation. Iggy’s visit ended with a lunch hosted by JPI, bringing together faculty, staff, and students to learn more about her work and the challenges facing journalists in Mongolia.

Covering Protests

I spoke on April 17 at Carleton College convocation on the evolution of protest coverage over the last several decades. Entitled Protests and Press Freedom: From Mexico City to Minneapolis, the speech tracked my own personal journey as a reporter covering street protests in Latin America to an advocate for the rights of journalists to report on demonstrations in the US in a climate of increased repression and violence. Many thanks to Professor Al Montero for inviting me and hosting me in Northfield, Minnesota.

Is Kidnaping Back?

This is the question I asked in my latest for CJR, which describes the kidnapping of US journalist Shelly Kittleson and the questions raised by her experience. You can read it here.