Journalist Kate Sosin on covering trans issues in the age of Trump 2.0

Kate Sosin found their way to The 19th by a happy accident. After being laid off in 2020 from Logo TV, an offshoot of MTV focused on queer audiences, they were applying to any job postings they could find.

The 19th was then just an early seedling in the media ecosystem. The nonprofit news startup, which covers how politics and policy impact women and LGBTQ+ people, launched in January 2020 — moments before the world plunged into pandemic life. Sosin saw an open role for an LGBTQ+ beat reporter.

“I thought, ‘There's no way I'll get that, because every queer journalist I know is out of work,’” said Sosin, who’s based in Los Angeles. They also had no expectations for what the publication would become. “If I’m honest, I didn't think it was going to be a big deal. I was excited to get a job, but I just didn't know exactly what I was getting myself into.”

The 19th has since established itself as a respected nonprofit publication that’s partnered with outlets like The Texas Tribune, KFF Health News, The Guardian, and Teen Vogue. The newsroom earned two national Edward R. Murrow Awards in 2024 and 2025: one for breaking news coverage on Biden stepping down and Harris stepping up, and another for a series about being pregnant in a post-Roe v. Wade America. It also won an Online Journalism Award in 2024.

Sosin, meanwhile, has tackled a suite of subjects there with empathy and rigor. Whether it’s a story about the threats queer Native youth in South Dakota are facing or a spotlight on the legendary plaintiff Jim Obergefell, Sosin specializes in precisely situating the present moment within the sweep of history to provide rich context for readers.

“As a trans person, I have to write news that makes me want to get up in the morning,” Sosin said. “So I need to find a way to tell stories that are more constructive than just, ‘Here's another thing that has been taken away from you.’”

Storyboard spoke with Sosin about how to sustainably cover queer issues in today’s unrelenting political climate and how they honed their sense of the stories worth pursuing. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

You've been covering the LGBTQ+ beat for a long time. What's been the biggest shift in your approach and priorities since the Trump administration took office?

I used to think I had to cover every story — and I kind of did. There were not other people doing this work, or there were fewer. Now I don't. Part of that is just that other people are doing it so I don't have to. Another part of it is that I can’t. It’s too sad. Every single story that’s a daily breaker, I just don't do. Because we're a nonprofit newsroom and everyone can pick up our stuff, if it's going to be done elsewhere, I'm going to not do it. They can read it elsewhere. Let me do something that has a bigger impact for us. This approach has been a lifesaver for me. 

Is this approach different from other places you’ve worked at? There’s a lot of pressure at daily news outlets to churn it out. Can you speak to how that mandate is different at The 19th or how you’ve carved it out to be different?

That’s been my whole struggle in journalism. Everyone's like, “We need a bite at that apple.” But do you really? Everybody wants that traffic. I get it. We want traffic too. We're still a business, even if we are a nonprofit. But we’ve continued to find that even if what we call “beat-building stories” are bringing some people in, it’s not that many people. Those are not the stories that draw in new readers because we're not the biggest mainstream newsroom. We don't have a staff that’s going to break that story first or pull in the whole nation. We're not CNN. So what can we offer that's going to be substantially different on day two that’s not already being offered? What can we offer that's going to enlighten, beyond the minute-to-minute breaking piece? That’s where we’ve learned to shine. 

There’s been an onslaught of news to cover since Trump took office, which we know is by design, and a truly overwhelming need for robust coverage on your beat in particular. But you’re one person. How has this climate shaped your instincts and choices when it comes to which stories to pursue and which to pass on?

My only goal is to not burn out. There have been so many moments in my career where I have burned out and I’ve been at risk of leaving journalism. The risk of burnout is so great when the news is so bleak. I know this is a time when I really need to do this job, and I need to do it well, and I need to do it with purpose. That means that I need to pace myself. 

I've tried really hard to work hard. But more than that, I’ve tried really hard to work sustainably. I don't work past my hours. When I leave work, I leave work. My life feels really big and a very small part of it is this job. When this administration came in, I reaffirmed that commitment. That looks like being nice to myself when I can. That looks like being OK with not covering some stories. That looks like focusing on one thing at a time. I have to be comfortable being slower. We all have to pace ourselves or we will succumb to the overwhelm, which is so easy to do. It’s such a stressful time.

These stories can be really tough and really sad. But folks at The 19th also do a good job highlighting things people are doing to make change and respond to this environment. How do you balance the breakdown between the reporting you want and need to do about problems versus solutions-oriented stories?

I don't have a ton of experience with solutions journalism. I've learned about it and I've done it, but I don't think about them as solutions stories. The only news that’s written for trans people is so devastating that if you just read trans news, you would not want to exist in the world after reading it. As a trans person, I have to write news that makes me want to get up in the morning. So I need to find a way to tell stories that are more constructive than just, “Here's another thing that has been taken away from you.”

But I also just don't feel that way about what's happening in the world. Our present moment is in a backlash because there's been so much progress made. I have a responsibility to communicate that what is happening is the result of incredible progress. We have to be responsible about it and not just information dump. I'm not looking for a silver lining as much as I am looking for an honest balance.

Do you find that your audience responds well to that? Do you have a sense of how they engage with stories that are more hopeful?

Our audience responds well to stories that are more nuanced. People always assume that an audience needs something really simple, as if audiences are somehow dumber than we are. They’re so smart. Every time I do a story, readers are like, “Here are all the things you got wrong. Here are all the ways you didn’t understand this.” And I'm like, “Thank you. You should have reported this, because you’re smarter than I am.” The more complicated you make a story, the more people you draw in. Because they see themselves in it.

How do you think about where the news ecosystem and industry is now in terms of the volume and quality of coverage of queer issues, particularly reporters with lived experience? How would you situate this moment in the landscape?

It's really cool. I look at the Trans Journalists Association, which didn't exist 10 years ago, and it has upward of 600 members. That’s crazy to me. I think back even further to when I started my career, which would have been 20 years ago, and the only other trans reporter I had ever met at that time was Monica Roberts, who’s no longer with us. 

I didn't know trans reporters. I didn't even want to be an LGBTQ+ beat reporter, it was just the only job I could get. Then I realized that being a trans person telling LGBTQ+ stories meant a lot to people, and that was a real job I could do. People didn't think of LGBTQ+ news. Now there are legions and legions of people doing this work. People are like, “You're an elder.” That's awesome. There are people doing so much cooler, better stuff. There’s so many people that I can’t keep up. They're all across newsrooms. Maybe the world feels really hard, but it's changing — and it’s changing really fast.

How do you talk about safety and privacy with your sources? Have those conversations shifted at all since the Trump administration took office and are you noticing sources are more concerned about that?

It's definitely become a greater concern. We’ve increased our safety protocols. I always was pretty cautious with sources about safety concerns. We’ll talk through, “Hey, if you go on the record and you're part of a national article, here are some things that can happen to you and you should be aware of that. Let's talk through the ramifications of how you decide to tell your story and what it means to share it.” But that’s heightened even more so now, especially if we get into things like immigration. 

It’s hard because there are ways in which I want to make greater exceptions that provide people with cover and anonymity. Yet we are less able to do that in this administration because we are ourselves more at risk as journalists if we do that. It has meant more difficult conversations. It probably has limited the stories that we can tell because our sources are less safe, which is a shame.

I’ve enjoyed how you pursue a really nice range of different kinds of reporting — some stories lean more heavily on narrative, while others are actionable and service-oriented. I thought the explainer earlier this year about passports was a good example of that. How do you think about what form a story should take when you start your reporting?

I don't really think about it that way. I think more in terms of, “What are people asking for?” With the passport story, so many people in my life were asking about this. To be honest, I was asking, too. I realized that I had all these questions, so what if I just answered those questions and used experts?

Usually if a piece is narrative-based, it's because someone has a story to tell or a story lends itself to an issue best. I report and report and report until the story just starts coming out of my brain. Sometimes that means I report too much, but this helps a story organize itself in my head. I’m at my best when I report it enough so that the story writes itself.

It doesn't sound like your editors are particularly prescriptive about the form a story needs to take. Is that a fair assessment?

My editors let me pick my stories, report them how I want to and turn them in on a timeline that makes sense for me. They give me a lot of space to do what I want to do. It's very rare that they say, “Do this and do it by this timeline.” Sometimes there is a deadline, obviously, because we're a newsroom. But for the most part, there’s a lot of room.

Your reporting is always grounded in the stories of real people living out the impacts of the policy choices you're writing about. How do you think about narrative in shorter enterprise pieces where the writing has to be economical because the real estate is limited?

That's actually my favorite. Sometimes it's just a few quotes or descriptions, or a few sentences, but you need to capture the essence of someone. It's a lovely little challenge to sew that together and give a snapshot of them. It’s really fun. We did this Voting Rights Act anniversary piece with little vignettes, about 300 words each. The questions are: Who is this person? What’s the elevator pitch version of them? What’s the most significant thing they said? What is the most significant thing that they've done? Why does it matter historically? By the time you start writing them, they’re done. For the most part, that’s all people want to read anyway.

What advice would you give to reporters on this beat right now, in this particular political climate?

Don't follow the news or be responsive to it. Create the news. 

It’s significant to me that everybody's writing stories about how all of our rights are being stripped away or asking, “Is gender-affirming care safe for kids or not?” Those guidelines have largely gone unchanged for years, but no one's reported that. Lawmakers continue to argue this, but the doctors don't. We're in this alternate reality where the news can change the outcome of people's lives. Our narratives can reshape our realities and how we perceive what is safe and what is not. But the truth of the matter is still the same: gender-affirming care has been found safe and effective. It's still prescribed. All the major medical associations back it. 

In terms of trans people participating in sports, there is science that still supports that trans women can compete in sports against cis women and there's no competitive advantage. But we don't report that anymore and engage in the noise instead. This defensive, silly, “Just present both sides of this argument without doing the actual research” is not good journalism. Go for the facts, and put them in the news.

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Carly Stern is an independent reporter and editor based in Brooklyn who covers health, housing and economic security. Her enterprise work has appeared in publications including The New York Times, Vox and The Guardian.