Meet Cnn’s Jessica Dean: ‘We take people around the world’

For CNN -anchor Jessica DeanThe weekends are anything but quiet. Just successful for the annual marking as hosts the Primetime Weekend edition of CNN NewsroomShe leads live coverage every Saturday and Sunday – hours that often unfold in real time against the background of history.

Since officially took on the role on 3 August last year, Dean and her small team have been in the center of some of the most consistent breaknows of the past 12 months. They have the chaos of the murder attack on President Trump in Butler, Penn.; reported on the fall of the Assad regime; Covered the diagnosis of former President Biden; delivered updates about the Boulder Fire Attack; And followed American military strikes on Iran. “You have to think very quickly and you have to trust yourself,” says Dean about the work. “And you also have to trust your team.”

That trust comes from years in the field that has recorded for Dean Stints that do local news in Arkansas and Philadelphia, join CNN to CNN and that year cover the midterms, travel with the presidential campaign of the then candidate Joe Biden and reported via the Early Covid Pandemic. Dean says that her job now feels like the highlight of all those experiences. “People come to CNN when big things happen,” she says. “We take people around the world … and there is so much value to give them to the ground and to help them through those moments.

‘Returning to Iran, you know, we had Fred plead in Iran. We had Clarissa Ward in Israel. We can take people there … It’s hard for news now. It is a moment for us, I think, where we really have to prove ourselves to viewers and they must be able to trust us. And especially in our show I really try to honor that, and we work very hard to get it right and to ensure that people, when they spend their time with us, are walking away knowing more and better. “

CNN is confronted with a new era when viewers shift to digital

The work of Dean, unnecessary to say, also comes in a crucial time for CNN and for cable news in general. The network, founded in 1980 as the first 24-hour television news channel, built its reputation from large live events of the Gulf War to election evenings. Today’s viewers no longer get their news in the same way. People can bounce between live TV and clips on social media – or even no TV at all, and prefer to get their news in snackable snacks from social media. For CNN, the challenge sticks to his reputation for real -time, reliable coverage, while finding new ways to reach an increasingly distributor digital audience.

Dean sees that as an opportunity. “CNN has many exciting things that we turn more into the digital world,” she says. “At the moment you can watch us on linear television, which is great. But the coming year will be able to further expand further. And one thing I know for sure – there will be no shortage of news.”

Kijknieuws from cable news has been under pressure industry, with competition from on-demand content and shifting demography. But when a big story breaks, the audience (or at least part of the news public) still becomes one or more of the big three – CNN, Fox News and MSNBC. Deans weekend broadcast of Dean is often where those first crucial hours play for CNN. “It’s not my job to tell people what to think,” she says. “It is my job to give them information and let them decide what makes sense to them.”

The pressure to be accurate, measured and fast is real. “We don’t want to be an alarmist, but we also want to ensure that viewers get all the information,” she says. “It is not my job to tell people what they should think. It is my job to give them information and let them decide what makes sense to them. And I have discovered that people really respond well to that.”

In the coming year, continuous experiments for CNN will deliver, because it seems to integrate more digital-first stories without losing its core live-News DNA. Dean from her side is focused on her lane. “Those seven, maybe eight, maybe nine hours per weekend – we can do that well. We can do well.”