The space to breathe

This January, I wrote a hypothetical story about how to keep newsrooms safe from raids the day before federal agents raided Washington Post engagement reporter Hannah Natanson’s home. More than one industry person called me prescient, but I wasn’t. It was completely obvious this was going to happen.The environment for newsrooms during the second Trump administration is unprecedented: an increase in secret subpoenas, raids on journalists and newsrooms, ratcheted-up surveillance, new restrictions, and an overwhelming message that we should fall in line or face the consequences. In January, not every newsroom leader had accepted that the norms of American democracy were being so thoroughly undermined. Wouldn’t our Constitutional protections — and the principles we tell ourselves are American norms — hold up?I didn’t think so. For some Americans, those things had never been true; many newsroom leaders were simply too privileged to see it clearly, and therefore had a harder time believing…