A quick housekeeping note: We’ll be off next week and at AAJA! If you see me around, I’d love to say hi. This week’s lead story is Lewis Raven Wallace’s newest column in “The Case for Movement Journalism,” highlighting the importance of stories as “arrows in a quiver” — strategic ways to inspire action and hope among communities.

In this issue:

And also: Journalist affinity organizations call for global action to protect journalists in Gaza, screenings of a documentary on anti-trans disinformation, Patrick Soon-Shiong says he aims to take the L.A. Times public, and Nieman Lab launches monthly traffic rankings for three categories of U.S. newsrooms. Plus, the resource of the week is a digital security and doxxing checklist.

Plus, some cool Objective news — writer Alexis Allison’s investigation into years-long bullying at a New York newsroom is a finalist for two INN Awards this year! You can read about the other finalists here.

—James Salanga

“Erin In the Morning,” the popular Substack and social media accounts run by trans movement journalist Erin Reed, started out of necessity: Reed was beginning her medical transition, and found it difficult to navigate where to get hormone therapy.

“I set out just to map all of the clinics that are out there, and I created a little Google map,” she said, and after releasing the resource online, other people started adding their clinic information, too. Reed says the map has now been accessed at least 12 million times. “I can’t enter into a space with trans people without somebody telling me that they were able to transition because of that map.”

Reed didn’t set out to become a journalist, but this project put her on the path. As the Christian right’s efforts to organize anti-trans backlash began succeeding at the state level, Reed says she found herself at the nexus of people who were fighting against attacks on health care for trans youth, and those who had key information about local trans health resources — the clinics and organizations that went into her first mapping project.

“I could ask somebody in Arkansas, ‘Hey, this bill, what does it do to your clinic?’ And they would tell me, and then I would report on it on Twitter,” she said. “People started following me. People started relying on the information that I was putting out.”

Before long, Reed migrated from then-Twitter to TikTok, and began putting out information via short videos. She started a Substack and quit her day job — and was soon able to sustain her life from paid subscriptions.

Movement journalism at its best can share strategy and inspiration among people taking action in local communities. The objectivity myth in mainstream journalism requires journalists to pretend their stories exist for no particular purpose other than truth; movement journalists can be more realistic and exacting.

Read the full column on The Objective.

—Lewis Raven Wallace

Journalist affinity organizations call for global action to protect journalists in Gaza: As Israeli military forces continue to target Palestinian journalists, the Arab and Middle Eastern Journalists Association, The Association of LGBTQ+ Journalists, Trans Journalists Association, Society of Professional Journalists, and the Foreign Press Association say targeting journalists and starving them is a war crime. “We call on all journalist associations to condemn these acts, demand international legal intervention, and refuse to normalize the targeting of the press,” the associations say.

📻 See the call on AMEJA’s site.

New documentary catalogs rise of anti-trans hate from mainstream media to the Supreme Court: The film, called Heightened Scrutiny, is screening in select Los Angeles and San Francisco theaters in the coming weekend and week. Journalists like Gina Chua and Jelani Cobb offer insight into the rise of anti-trans disinformation. (And Objective columnist and board member Lewis Raven Wallace makes a cameo!)

📽️ See where to watch the film on the Heightened Scrutiny site.

Patrick Soon-Shiong says he wants to take the L.A. Times public: Per the AP: “Soon-Shiong said he’s working with ‘an organization that’s putting that together right now.’ He didn’t identify the organization or say whether the deal would involve an initial public offer to sell shares of the company or another investment arrangement.”

📰 Read the story in the Associated Press.

Nieman Lab to publish monthly traffic rankings of three types of U.S. newsrooms: They’ll publish rankings looking at the top 25 U.S. local newspapers, nonprofit newsrooms, and public radio stations who received the most traffic across that month. Data is derived from analytics company Similarweb, which estimates a site’s total monthly visits (as opposed to visitors).

📊 Read the story in Nieman Lab.

Have a story you think we should include in this section of next week’s newsletter? Let us know here or by responding to this email.

Our next print magazine is coming soon! If you’re interested in getting it in the mail, and you’re not already a member, consider supporting us today with a monthly donation! We’re a small organization and rely on readers like you to help us challenge newsrooms to do better.

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This week’s resource is … a digital security & doxxing prevention checklist from Interrupting Criminalization.

The 8-page checklist offers steps in 9 different categories (securing devices, scrubbing online data, protecting communications, setting up safe browsing, protecting stored data, establishing password hygiene, protecting social media accounts, planning for protests and border crossings, and creating a safety/support plan) to better guard your digital presence and more resources to gear up your digital safety.

Thanks for reading. We’ll have more for you in a couple weeks.

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