We’re revisiting our 2003 book Dying to Tell the Story, which was a look at the safety of journalists in the wake of the devastating impact the early months of the Iraq war had on our news community. The deaths of more than 80 colleagues so far this year prompted us to expand the focus from Iraq to offer a wider perspective on how the safety landscape has changed for media professionals around the world in the last decade. Over the next few months, INSI will speak to a wide cross section of people from our industry – from the executives who make the decisions on budget and strategy to those on the receiving end of those decisions and deployments – the reporters, producers and fixers – and crucially to freelancers for whom foreign and particularly conflict reporting seems to become increasingly risky. We aim to answer the questions: what more can be done to protect all those who put themselves in harm’s way to bring home the news; why is journalism so dangerous now; are journalists being targeted more now than they were in the past; and how is technology impacting on safety? INSI plans to publish the findings on World Press Freedom Day, in a book and via a multi-media website featuring interviews with industry leaders, journalists and executives. We’ll keep you posted about how it’s going. The latest high profile casualty this month, bringing the total to 85 journalists killed since January, was American Steven Sotloff who was murdered by Islamic State militants. Sotloff was working as a freelance reporter covering conflicts in the Arab world when he was kidnapped in Syria in 2013. His kidnapping had been kept out of the media by his family, and the news only came to light when IS militants threatened to behead him at the end of a video released in August showing the killing of fellow journalist James Foley. We were also saddened to see the way our British colleague John Cantlie appeared in several videos released this month by Islamic State militants. In an article for the Guardian, I wrote about the appalling use of journalists as propaganda by groups determined to intimidate brave colleagues like John, James and Steven. http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/sep/21/journalist-safety-john-cantlie-islamic-state-bbc Sotloff and Foley were experienced journalists as is Cantlie. All three of them freelancers. With news gathering budgets on the wane, freelancers with limited support, equipment and training are increasingly being used to cover the world’s danger zones. We reissued our advisory on planning and preparation for hostile environments, http://newssafety.org/latest/advisories/safety-advisory/detail/advisory-planning-and-preparation-for-hostile-environments-1483/ while a second advisory dealt with covering the Ebola outbreak in West Africa http://newssafety.org/latest/advisories/safety-advisory/detail/advisory-covering-the-ebola-outbreak-1485/ We pay tribute to Steven and to James, but it is important that we also remember the 84 other journalists and news media staff who have died down their jobs this year, whose deaths do not make the headlines and whose lives are threatened daily in countries around the world. INSI pays tribute to all those men and women too. This was something that I spoke about at Oklahoma University this week after being invited to visit Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communications as part of its Presidential Dream Course: Chronicling America’s Wars. My particular thanks goes to our colleagues there for inviting me to be part of such a fascinating discussion. Hannah Storm (Image shows candles lining a wall around a reflection pond at the University of Central Florida, Wednesday, Sept. 3, 2014, in Orlando, Fla., to honour journalist Steven Sotloff, who was beheaded by the Islamic State militant group in two weeks. Sotloff attended the University of Central Florida between 2002 and 2004. AP Photo/John Raoux)