You get the news that someone is willing to pay for

by Jane Migliara Brigham

When trans people think about journalists, we generally think about people that want to hurt us.  

This has been remarked upon for years.  There is a long history of journalists “just asking questions” in a way that undermines our rights and security, most famously with Jesse Singal’s now infamous 2018 Atlantic article.  

The general attitude can be summed up with the Onion headline: “It Is Journalism’s Sacred Duty To Endanger The Lives Of As Many Trans People As Possible”.

Bigotry is certainly a factor in all this.  The fact that we are widely mistrusted means that cis journalists can pass off misleading or false information about us without getting pushback from their colleagues or their mostly cis audience.  That explains how long-established institutions like the New York Times and the BBC can become beacons of transphobic bigotry.

It explains why bigotry in the news is common, but not why it took so long for a trans alternative to develop in response.

To understand that, you have to understand how journalism as a profession has been gutted.  Since the internet made access to news practically free, the public has been far less willing to pay for news coverage.  This has led to far less money going into the news business.

The result is that journalism jobs are more precarious than ever.  In the last 15 years, the amount of people employed as journalists has dropped by 20%, from 58,500 in 2010 to 49,300 in 2024.  

The few remaining journalists have had two choices; either stay within their existing outlets and double down on sensationalism in a desperate bid for attention, or leverage their personal brand to go independent and take the attention and money with them, leaving less of both for the other journalists.  

The result is a race to the bottom in terms of quality.

If you are desperate for clicks in order to keep your job, it's easy to justify targeting a minority group that your readership is already wary of, as their apprehensions can be turned into clicks.  This is part of the motivation behind the wave of transphobic articles that have spread across the anglosphere in the last few years.

Trans people are right to believe that journalists by and large don’t have their interest at heart.  I work in journalism myself, and even I share this view.

That doesn't change the fact that a primary reason that journalists are so willing to act this unethically is because they are scared of the next layoff.  And that precarity in journalism began when news readers became unwilling to pay for the coverage they wanted.

Readers aren’t guaranteed to get the coverage they want.  You get the coverage that someone is willing to pay for, whether that someone is you or someone who wishes you harm.

Before 2022, there were no news outlets dedicated to covering trans news in the United States.  That year, Assigned Media was founded, and Erin in the Morning shifted to full-time coverage.

What is notable is not these outlets themselves, but how long it took for someone to fill the niche of trans journalism in the first place.  Until then, trans news had no dedicated full-time journalists on the beat who were not themselves bigots trying to undermine our dignity.  

What trans coverage existed was filtered through the lens of cis journalists under editorial guidelines set by cis-dominated institutions.  The closest that we got was the trans coverage within queer newspapers, many of whom wrote about trans women in the same tone they wrote about drag queens.  

The result was that journalism about us had little relevance to our lives.

This became a major problem when trans people became the target of a gender conservative backlash, and we became the target of thousands of anti-trans bills across the country.  At the same time, transphobic framing in major news outlets became the norm, leading to the whitewashing of transphobia for a liberal audience.

In such an environment, it was a massive issue that the only dedicated trans outlets were plucky upstarts.  

They had no history, meaning that they had no reputation to leverage when they were arguing for the dignity of trans people.  It was all too easy for cis journalists to dismiss them as “trans activists”, a term which in the world of journalism would tar them as being wholly unworthy of being taken seriously.

But why had it taken until 2022 for dedicated trans news outlets to develop?  Because that is when many trans people realized that the corporate owned media was institutionally biased against them.  In response, many of us began doing what we had been unwilling to do before: we started paying for the news coverage that we actively valued.  

If trans people had not been willing to open their wallets, these news upstarts would have faded away before they could establish themselves.

In 2025, the status of trans news isn't quite as dire, but the status of trans people in the wider world has only grown worse.  We have become the central scapegoat of the new administration, and our civil rights and dignity are being stripped from us at every turn.  

In light of the most widespread anti-trans hate wave in the history of the United States, how many people are working on behalf of trans readers to cover this story and how it affects us?

I tried to get a number for how many people are doing full time trans coverage as their primary journalism beat.  I excluded people who only sometimes do trans coverage, or people who cover trans topics primarily in the context of other social issues.  

The number I came up with was 5.  From The Needle, there is Artemis T. Douglas and myself.  From Assigned Media, there is Evan Urquhart.  And from Erin in the Morning, there is Erin Reed and S. Baum.  

There are other journalists covering trans issues from a pro-trans perspective, such as the people in Trans Writes and Trans News Network, but neither outlet posts frequently enough for the journalists involved to be doing this full-time.

None of these journalists were able to do this work within cis-led news outlets.

There are also groups for trans journalists such as the Trans Journalists Association, but most of its members are not primarily covering trans news.

There are also media non-profits, like Translash Media but they are focused more on advocacy than news- which are distinct.

This is especially bad since there are approximately 2.8 million transgender people in the United States.  For every full time pro-trans journalist on the trans beat, there are about 560,000 trans people.  That is an absurd ratio.  

For every journalist, there are as many trans people to serve as there are people in the entire state of Wyoming.  Assuming the responsibility was spread equally, each of us would have to serve an amount of people similar to that of a House Congressional District, all by ourselves.  By comparison, Congresspeople get their own staff, high salaries, offices, and full benefits in order to fulfill their roles.

This workload is completely unworkable, and all but the biggest stories will fall through the cracks without any of us hearing about them.

And all this is before we factor in how little money most of us make in covering this.  

Every trans-led publication makes most of its money from readers paying for subscriptions.  None of us have corporate backers to backstop us if the subscriptions stop coming in.  This means that we can only do our jobs if our readers are willing to pay us to do it.  

Here at The Needle, we just started in October.  Since we had no outside financial backing, we have had to work full time in order to establish an audience and subscription base, so that we will eventually be able to support ourselves while keeping the public informed.  

As of writing, The Needle has 12 paid subscribers.  When including people who paid for a yearly subscription and gave a full yearly payment up front, we have made $481.20 over 2 months.  This money was then used to pay 2 freelancers, about $100 was used to pay for our operating costs, and the rest was split between my colleague Artemis and myself.

We obviously can’t live on that.  We want the Needle to be self-sustaining, so that we can serve the public and also take care of ourselves. 

More importantly, the public we want to serve is first and foremost our fellow trans people. 

We aren't asking for much.  We already make enough to cover our operating costs.  We just need enough to keep ourselves housed and fed.  Once that is covered, we have everything needed to keep informing the public.

I for one want nothing more than to keep doing this long term.  I also need to make money off of it.  

The only reason I was able to work full time in the hope of someday making a living out of this is that I had been unemployed for 15 months with nothing else to do.  

Eventually, I will find some other job that can pay my bills.  When that day comes, I need to know that I won't have to choose between doing right by myself and others, and choosing to be financially responsible.

That will only happen if people are willing to pay for the news coverage that they want to see.

This is where I stop being coy.  You should buy a subscription to The Needle.  100 more Gold subscriptions would allow me to cover my li, and for The Needle to pay our freelancers- Roberta and Percival- for many more articles. 

Both Roberta and Percival are trans and from the Global South, and we want to be able to pay them at US freelancer rates, rather than exploiting the difference between our country’s standards of living.

If you support our coverage, consider subscribing to The Needle as a Gold tier supporter, at $20 a month- you'll get access to all content! For a limited time, you can get half off your first three months!

Become Gold!

Supporting us means supporting the only news site to combine trans news with a focus on trans culture.  We are the only outlet that from its very beginnings was run by transsexuals, for transsexuals.  

This is an intentional choice. We want to serve our community and our people.

Supporting The Needle, supporting us, means supporting trans-led, trans-first, news and culture coverage. We want to continue to build an inter-statal platform for transsexual news and culture. 

In other words, we are committed to making our tagline real. That’s why you see coverage of not just the US, but also Brazil, Ireland, and the UK in our stories. We can’t keep that up without readers willing to pay for the news that helps them navigate the world. 

Listen, we know that putting articles behind email walls and paywalls sucks.  We don’t like hiding our work.  But that is how we are able to pay to keep doing this.

The alternative to supporting trans news is accepting what the bigots write about us.  The news about trans people will be purely the domain of the bigots and the uneducated in the New York Times, the BBC, and others.  

That’s how it used to be, and that’s how trans people were put in the position we are in today.

So, what do you say?  Are you willing to pay for the news coverage you want to see in the world?