JMS’s Jesse Marx helped edit Pulitzer finalist series on police chases

Jesse Marx, JMS’s student media manager, acted as an editor for a series of stories which are now a Pulitzer finalist in national reporting.

This series of stories, published in 2024 by the San Francisco Chronicle and written by Jennifer Gollan and Susie Neilson, highlight the frequency of deadly police chases. These reports contain interviews with loved ones, government officials and advocates as well as copious amounts of research.

“Jen and Susie are absolute pros,” said Marx. “Before I’d even walked in the door, they’d filed an enormous number of public records requests, more than I can even recall now. They read through reports, studies, police policy manuals and procedures. They’d spoken to families of loved ones, police departments, outside experts and advocates. They also created their own database drawing from the research of grassroots orgs, news reports across the country, obituaries and more. In addition to giving advice on the reporting and writing, I helped fact check our database, ensuring that we hadn’t made any mistakes.”

While working on these stories, Marx learned new information himself regarding deadly police chases and was shocked by some of the information he learned along the way.

“The stat we lead with still shocks me to this day: on average, nearly two people die in a police chase every day in the United States, and most of the victims are not the fleeing driver. They’re passengers and bystanders. There was never any second guessing. Police officers who initiate deadly crashes have near-total immunity, and they escape accountability through legal protections. That’s an obvious problem, a decision we’ve made as a society, that upends families and entire communities,” said Marx.

Marx’s role took place primarily after the reporting and story drafts were already written, but he still played a key role in authenticating the series.

“My job was to look at the series with fresh eyes and ensure that the stories were bulletproof — the reporting was rock solid, went through legal review, presented in a compelling way — and everything got to the finish line in both online and print and any Hearst TV markets that wanted it,” said Marx. 

The series can be viewed here on the Pulitzer Prize’s website as well as the San Francisco Chronicle's website.