MY STORY WINS AWARD

I am very excited to announce that one of my stories, “The Staggering Scale of Trump’s ‘War on HIV’” has received the Excellence in HIV/AIDS Reporting Award at the NLGJA: Association of LGBTQ+ Journalists’ Excellence in Journalism Awards! It was one of four stories by Uncloseted Media that won awards for coverage in our first full year of existence.

I am immensely proud of myself and of my fellow reporters at Uncloseted Media for this momentous achievement for such a young publication. To be recognized at such a high level for our first full year of coverage is exciting. And on a personal level, it’s vindicating to see that, while the largest and best-resourced news publications in the U.S. continue to leave the trans community out in the cold in their coverage, independent journalism done by an early-career trans woman like myself can pick up that slack and do important and meaningful work.

My HIV story in particular is important as it captures yet another example of the mass dismantling of federal aid programs by the Trump administration. The NIH alone slashed $1.353 billion from HIV funding in just the first five months of the new government, a number that has in all likelihood only increased. That becomes even more sobering upon more recent revelations that some of the government employees tasked with making cuts were using AI models to do it. This accountability journalism is crucial.

You can read it here: