Clocking in at the new-ish job

How is it December? This year has been absolutely chaotic. Personally, professionally, environmentally. I want to talk to you about how my work changed this year.

Content note: I covered a lot of tough stuff this year, including gender-based violence and firearm deaths.

I started the year off with a title change: interim data and technology reporter. It’s not a surprise if you’ve been following my coverage, but stepping back from data visualization felt huge. It’s something that consumed so much of my life for so long — which of course, isn’t really that long — and I had to do some internal work about wanting something different. I’m so grateful to work at The 19th, where they supported me and also bought my case for a full-time tech reporter.

After returning from unexpected leave, I wrote about the history of social media platforms suppressing posts about abortion.

And then stuff started to disappear.

Federal agencies began wiping websites, removing reports and taking down data that didn’t comply with President Donald Trump’s executive order defining gender as strictly binary and sex-based. I jumped into archiving mode, saving data about women and LGBTQ+ people for future use.

Official government sites weren’t the only ones self-censoring. It was unclear if any organization that utilized federal funds was beholden to the executive orders on gender and banning diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility.

I had already been speaking with several domestic violence nonprofits for a different story. In the United States, the federal government is the largest funder of domestic violence services. Losing grants would mean cutting back on food, housing and legal aid for survivors fleeing violence. A temporary funding freeze caused even more chaos, disrupting nonprofit operations across the country.

My colleague Mel Leonor Barclay and I published the first in what would be a new line of reporting in early February, detailing the impacts of federal changes on these essential service organizations.

Later in the year, domestic violence advocates sued the federal government over new restrictions on grant funding that they said made it impossible to serve survivors.

Covering the intersection of gender and technology usually means covering violence. Intimate partner violence is often mediated through technology — think tracking someone without their permission or holding passwords to all their essential accounts — and marginalized people are targeted online.

I joined Tech Policy Press, a nonprofit newsroom, as a 2025 Reporting Fellow. For both TPP and The 19th I covered the federal Take It Down Act, the federal law criminalizing nonconsensual intimate images.

One thing I wanted to do with my time at Tech Policy Press was dig into thornier questions about accountability and safety. With the support of editors at both publications, I was able to write deep dives into what we should do about kids making deepfakes of each other and whether the Take It Down Act will actually be enforced.

I think of privacy as one of the pillars of the gender and tech beat. I’ve been following age verification laws, which require a digital ID check to access pornography, since the first one went into effect in Louisiana in 2023. The Supreme Court heard arguments to a legal challenge this year, ultimately paving the way for more of these laws with its decision.

The headlines about age verification laws tend to focus on the slippery category of exactly what kind of content deserves to be restricted to adults or the privacy risks associated with face scans or uploading pictures of passports. I wanted to know how these laws were impacting the people on screen, creating the content that companies like Pornhub profit off of. Unfortunately, many adults do not want to upload a photo of their ID to a porn website, no matter how secure it is assured to be, so creators are losing audiences and income.

I covered other dimensions of gender-based violence, including how domestic violence and political violence are on the same spectrum. I also wrote about the role of firearms in intimate partner homicide-suicides, and had the honor of interviewing Doreen Dodgen-Magee, survivor of gun violence, about her family’s story.

My colleague Orion Rummler and I wrote about how anti-trans activists are co-opting the fight against female genital mutilation and cutting, making it more difficult for laws addressing this form of extreme gender-based violence to get passed.

At Tech Policy Press, my fellow fellow (ha!) Dia Kayyali collaborated with me on an article about the difficulties trans users face when trying to use age verification technology. (You can hear me talk about this story on This News Is So Gay, a delightful podcast that is remarkably upbeat despite the often bummer subject matter.)

It has been a wild year, and much of my beautiful beat memo I wrote last December full of technology pitches has been sidelined due to the chaos of the second Trump administration.

Someone asked me how all these story pieces fit together. I’m still distilling it into something easy to pitch to a producer — and I can probably dedicate another newsletter to the topic — but here’s a short take.

Tech reporting has naturally led into stories on gender-based violence, domestic violence and extremism. Who is seen, heard and allowed to voice an opinion is at the heart of a democracy — the promise of the Nineteenth Amendment. Harassment and violence are attempts to steal the power of marginalized people. In some ways the internet and social media elevated everyone to an international public square. But in reality, not everyone operates on equal ground. Our online lives are our real lives, and deserve the same level of criticism and coverage.

If any of this resonated with you, I’d love it if you could contribute to The 19th’s year-end impact drive. I very firmly feel I couldn’t cover what I do anywhere else. Your support means I get to file records requests, pay for court documents and travel to meet with survivors.

I’ve had the opportunity to learn from so many different people this year. One resource I’m excited about is the Lex Roman Extended Universe (aka Legends), which includes The Paid Newsletter Playbook and Revenue Rulebreaker.

It’s been great to meet people who are also thinking deeply about our fractured media ecosystem and how to make it sustainable. We also get to hype each other up!

Sarah Jutras runs Freelance for Life, which is all about building an intentional, creative life and business. I love the resources around ritual (which y’all know is my vibe) and there are tons of tips from someone who has been working for themselves for almost a decade. Subscribe to the newsletter to keep up with all the free goodies.

I am allegedly still filing stories. Catch me on Bluesky, Instagram or in The 19th’s newsletter.

More soon,
Jasmine

“Art Lab punch clock” by Bernard Polet on Flicker, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0