News Coverage That Meets This Moment

And why so little of it seems to do so

Welcome to Second Rough Draft, a newsletter about journalism in our time, how it (often its business) is evolving, and the challenges it faces.

Reporters and editors are having a tough time amid the welter that is Donald Trump’s second coming to the White House. But rather than begin this column by adding to the moaning about what isn’t working, I thought it would be helpful to first spotlight a few pieces that I think have met the moment, and then look more closely at why they have—and what we might learn more broadly.

Why Trump’s deportations should remind you of Obama

Let’s start with this piece from the Washington Post that focused on the pace of Trump’s deportations. As regular readers of this column know, this was a storyline I saw as predictable—that Trump was likely to change not so much the pace of deportations as the performativeness of them, inviting coverage of what had been going on more quietly, reveling in government work that his predecessor seemed embarrassed about. That is what the Post detailed.

In fact, Trump seems to be deporting about as many people on an average day as the Obama Administration did every day during the six years 2009-2014. NBC helpfully added that barely half of these early Trump deportees had criminal records. If you have the sense that the White House parade has mostly moved on in recent days from noise about deportations, the facts in these stories may help explain why.

Separating wheat from chaff in public health

Next would be a pair of recent columns from Dr. Katelyn Jetelina, one of the outstanding new crop of news creators, who writes a newsletter as Your Local Epidemiologist (and who is a consulting client of mine). In the first of these columns, YLE takes up the question of US withdrawal from the World Health Organization; in the second, Jetelina writes about the disappearance from government sites of an enormous amount of public health data.

She does not shy from acknowledging and detailing the flaws of WHO, and why dealing with it (or even working for it, as she once did) is often frustrating, even while explaining how withdrawal will make it harder to protect the health of the American people. In the column on public data, YLE both quantifies and qualifies what is happening, and what difference is likely to result.

The new boss is, after all, the old boss

Finally, there was this Wall Street Journal “tick-tock,” or timeline account of how Trump blinked earlier this week after adverse market reaction to his tariffs on our North American neighbors. The story takes the reader inside the chaos that is the second Trump Administration, which seems less different from the first than many other accounts have suggested, with advisers trying both to manipulate and to anticipate the whims of a mercurial chief executive.

the best journalism sees through the fog

All of these stories help confused readers better understand what Trump is—and isn’t—doing, rather than drowning in what he is saying. All to some extent cut against the grain of both breathless cable TV, with its mix of credulous stenography, worshipful pandering, cynical snark and partisan chatter, and of newspaper live blog coverage, featuring overload and incoherence, to put events in context. All of these better exemplars are deeply rooted in informed reporting and sophisticated analysis.

De-centering politics

What else do they have in common? They look at the more-likely-to-endure substance of events, rather than their evanescent politics. Indeed, it seems to me that while last year’s election was a moment to center politics in our coverage, this year may be a time to relatively marginalize politics in the mix of what we report.

For one thing, it is much too soon to understand the politics of what is happening right now. If, for instance, inflation rises as the result of tariffs or deficits, that will produce one set of political outcomes. Similarly, if government services are eroded by chaotic management, those who benefit from or depend on those services may be angered and activated. If inflation stays subdued or government becomes less intrusive and more efficient, the politics—in time, beginning no later than 2026—will be different.

Better for journalism to chart what is really changing, how, why and to what extent.

Needed: real reporting on Musk and his minions

The value of such an approach is also evident in the many stories not yet being coherently and thoroughly reported. One such topic is Elon Musk’s apparently enormous role in the operations of the federal government. Yes, his minions have seized access to lots of sensitive information. But are they using it? Are they even looking at it? Is Musk trying to govern by tweet, or is he re-directing the flow of funds?

Are the changes in foreign aid just chaotic and performative? Or do they presage a genuine effort to save money no matter if it results in the starvation or death by disease of thousands, or even millions, of those unlucky enough not to have been able to leave their native lands, like Musk, and come to ours? We need more reporting on this, and perhaps a bit less from those talking heads and, again, live blogs until we have it.

Is the offer of perhaps $75-100 billion in your tax dollars to buy out almost all of the federal civilian work force just an illegal pipe dream, like the bogus orders ostensibly abolishing the birthright citizenship added to the Constitution more than 150 years ago or freezing all federal payments? Do readers understand the cost of such a stunt as the buyout if implemented? Few stories have mentioned it. Do they know that not one penny toward this has been appropriated by the Congress? If not, do journalists bear some measure of the responsibility for an uninformed public? I would submit that we do.

Speaking of Congress, we also need more reporting on the prerogatives it is, at least for now, surrendering to a rampaging presidency. After holding the line against recess appointments just after the election, the branch of government created in the Constitution’s first Article has gone deathly quiet. Our system of checks and balances depends heavily on each branch guarding its own power. More stories on the flattening of Capitol Hill seem in order.

So there’s work to do, lots of it. But there are also journalists and others putting their heads down and doing that work, avoiding the distractions (and temptations) of the momentary in favor of trying to help those we serve make sense of what’s changing, and what isn’t. In a tough season, I hope their work is a source of both inspiration and hope.