How did we choose what to cover—and not cover—this year?

There are several valid ways to approach covering trans issues in the U.S. in 2025 as a trans journalist. There’s the “cover everything as quickly as possible” approach, firehosing your readers with every last bit of potential political news. Or the “cover one specific story with maximum depth” approach that is often slower but more impactful for readers.

I think both of these approaches are equally valid as journalistic strategies, but neither are really for me. First and foremost, I’m primarily an opinion writer these days—I rarely break fresh news, but I can help news readers understand the deeper dynamics at play and connect the dots on certain stories that emerge.

But in an age when trans people are generally extremely on edge over political attacks, it’s up to me as a journalist to take into account our readers’ mental health when picking and choosing stories to highlight. At the same time, queer readers should be aware of their own mindset when consuming the news. Do you really need to immediately know about that bill in that state across the country that has little chance of passing?

You might feel like you’re being aware of the news and being in the loop on the latest in trans rights, but what if being informed of every little thing happening in this big, wide world is actually hurting you?

I realize this might be an odd thing for a journalist to say, but seriously think about it. There’s a point in which hearing about so many things happening far away ends up chipping away at your own sense of safety and sanity.

@xtramagazine The United States Supreme Court has been formally asked to overturn Obergefell v. Hodges, the landmark decision that legalized gay marriage nationwide. It’s a scary headline, but it’s also one that comes with a lot of conditions. There’s plenty of fear-mongering and misinformation surrounding this—and while there are valid concerns given the current state of U.S. politics—don’t freak out just yet. The case was brought by Kim Davis, the former Kentucky county clerk who spent six days in jail in 2015 after refusing to issue marriage certificates to gay couples on religious grounds. In the petition filed to the Supreme Court, Davis’s attorney Mathew Staver argued that Justice Anthony Kennedy’s majority opinion in Obergefell was “legal fiction” at odds with the U.S. Constitution. But just because the case has been filed doesn’t mean that it will be taken up by the court. Lower courts have previously dismissed Davis’s claims. And a federal appeals court panel has said that Davis can’t use the First Amendment as a defence since she is being held liable for state action—which isn’t protected by that. If Obergefell does get overturned down the line, it would likely result in the legal status of gay marriage being decided on a state-by-state basis, similar to what we saw with Roe v. Wade. But there still would be some federal protections even in that event, like the Respect for Marriage Act. The Supreme Court will consider the petition at the end of September, so we won’t know if the court will decide to officially hear it until October. We break down what we know about what might happen with Obergefell, and the number of hurdles in the way before it does. 👨‍⚖️🏳️‍🌈 #lgbtqnews #unitedstates #marriageequality #obergefellvhodges #gayrights ♬ original sound – Xtra Magazine

I live in the bluest dot of perhaps the bluest state in the country, and I have local queer friends planning moves to Canada right now because they hear about things that will never come to pass in our area, but are happening in a deep red part of the country, and assume everything is about to change here where we live.

This piece is not meant as a criticism to any other trans journalists—I admire my peers deeply. I simply mean to explain my journalistic process in 2025, and how it’s changed.

The “cover everything quickly” approach is great for building an audience. It is the preferred method of many “influencer-journalists” these days, not only on trans issues, but across a wide swath of individual policy issues. Being first and covering everything is great for making your readership think you are an important source of critical information, the sort of “can’t miss” news reporting that makes people feel informed.

The second, “deep cut,” approach is valuable for uncovering details that aren’t readily apparent to readers at first blush, and that often get glossed over by the first approach. But with this strategy, you risk getting lost in the morass of modern short-attention-span social media, especially if you don’t already have a large audience.

In my own past, I’ve done a mix of both types of reporting. During the first Trump term, I was the one going out and writing five to 10 articles every week about every new anti-trans policy coming down the pike.

Back then, I constantly felt like I had to not only be the first to every new story but that I also had to be fast, lest the story get lost in the every-day-news-cycle churn and we missed the chance to mobilize against whatever new horror Trump and his lackeys had devised. I remember jumping out of bed at 11 p.m. the night the first Trump military ban dropped. I interviewed the head of a major LGBTQ2S+ rights organization at 2:30 a.m. Bless my source, they were absolutely wasted, and I didn’t blame them.

I filed that story at 4 a.m., did edits at 6:30 a.m. and the story was posted by 9 a.m. I didn’t bother going to sleep. Instead, I pitched three more outlets with different variations of analysis of the policy. All three were accepted. I didn’t sleep the following night either.

For me, this was all unsustainable in the long run and I burned out, an experience I’ve written about for Xtra before.

Some time in 2019, my every-day-news output eased, and I focused more on writing longer, more individual stories. This deep-cut approach takes a slower pace, more travel is involved and you become more emotionally involved in your stories. The teenage Black trans girl who told me about getting thrown off the top of the monkey bars at her NYC middle school for being trans still keeps me up at night.

Through all of this, I learned that I need a happy medium between covering everything all at once and covering one thing in all the depth.

My readers do not need to know about every little bill introduced in every state legislature. Bills, especially of the anti-trans variety, are just as often symbolic messaging tactics as often as they are serious bills designed to pass. Some hillbilly state representative from Alabama wants to signal to the Jesus freaks in his district that he hates the trannies, and doesn’t need to be reported to a nation full of anxious trans people with a propensity toward suicidality.

I have almost 90,000 BlueSky followers who look to me as a trusted source of information. I need to pick and choose which issues, bills and policies to highlight. Editors have been really helpful in this process. Early on in my career, editors would only take pitches if a given law or policy had some likelihood of passing. They’d make me prove it was a viable proposal with enough support to at least have a close vote before letting me proceed with a story.

Bills, especially of the anti-trans variety, are just as often symbolic messaging tactics as often as they are serious bills designed to pass.

Does a bill have many co-sponsors? Will Democrats be whipping votes in opposition? Is there enough time in the legislative calendar to pass the bill?

If it’s an executive branch action, like a Trump executive order, is it likely to survive an extended court fight? This question alone has moved many policies I would previously not have covered into the can’t-miss camp.

There are other questions I examine as well. If a particular policy doesn’t affect a large number of people, or if it is designed to set up a further horror in another policy area down the line (this is the whole raison d’être of the trans sports fight). I take federal government policy proposals more seriously than state-level counterparts. That’s not to say that state-level policies aren’t important; I’d just rather cover them when multiple states make a serious effort at trying to pass the same bill.

This process so far has never let me down. But it has come at a cost to my career. I get accused of being naive when I don’t report on a particularly viral piece of policy news. And others have emerged as “can’t miss” informative reporters instead of me. I’m mostly okay with all of that.

There’s no doubt that trans people in the U.S. are under grave threat from this conservative government. But there’s a thin line between informing readers and scaring them needlessly. People need to be informed of what’s happening, but trying to deliver—and conversely, trying to get them to consume—every bit of news is like trying to drink from a firehose.

If you keep drinking, you’ll be drowning before you know it.