Coverage of trans people made this NAU student journalist decide to come out publicly

LAUREN GILGER: And now let's turn to a student journalist with a story to tell. Leo Diven Legay is a senior at Northern Arizona University and the editor-in-chief of the Lumberjack, the student newspaper there. Normally, he writes about environmental issues or things that are happening in Flagstaff. But recently, after the assassination of Charlie Kirk and the conversation that followed about the suspect's motivation and transgender partner, Legay felt the need to write something much more personal.

It's a letter from the editor titled "A byline change," and it's essentially his coming out as transgender in a professional way. In it, he writes about his frustration with the coverage of trans people in much of the media, but also about his uncertainty about talking about his own transgender identity as a journalist.

"My impending gender transition and my journalism aspirations appeared at odds," he wrote.

See, as journalists, we're supposed to stay unbiased outside observers on the events we report on. But could he be seen as unbiased as a trans person, an identity that has become something stigmatized and politicized by forces outside his control.

Legay thought so, and spoke more with The Show about why.

LEO DIVEN LEGAY: I've always known that there was something about me. I've always known that I was not a woman. And I never truly processed that — or at least I was procrastinating processing that. I figured I would get my life together first, and then I would figure out all of the gender identity issues. And then it was really when I got to college, when I made trans friends, when I reflected more inwardly, that I realized that I couldn't keep procrastinating this very real part of my life.

GILGER: So you, it sounds like, recently began sort of taking medication to kind of formally transition. And you weren't at first going to talk about this publicly. You were going to kind of finish college and just sort of keep this to yourself for a while.

LEGAY: Yes, because it always felt very personal and internal — and it still does, frankly. I didn't intend for this piece that I wrote to be a big coming out piece. It was really venting about things that I saw around me and experiences I was having as a trans person and somebody who was aspiring to be a journalist.

And I wanted to express that and also express solidarity with the trans people around me who I work with.

GILGER: ... Tell us about what it is that led to you wanting to write this where you felt like you. It almost sounds like from the piece, you felt like you needed to speak out.

LEGAY: A lot of it came from the aftermath of the Charlie Kirk assassination, because a lot of the news coverage that was coming out around that time was talking about trans people. A lot of it was not actually relevant, though. And watching that unfold made me feel very angry about the state of journalism and how trans people were being spoken about.

And then I was seeing how it was affecting my newsroom, because a lot of staff on the Lumberjack are trans, and they wanted to discuss these events and go down to Phoenix for the memorial, and go to vigils that we're having on campus. But they were worried about how being trans would affect their ability to cover these events. And that really upset me, and I wanted to speak about that.

GILGER: Right, OK. So you made this decision. You wrote this piece. It's called a "A byline change." Which makes sense in terms of changing your own name. But, I mean, you write this line, right? You say that your impending gender transition and your journalism aspirations seem to be at odds.

You write: "How can I be perceived as an unbiased source when my existence as a transgender person is inherently stigmatized and politicized?"

Tell us what you meant by that.

LEGAY: Yeah. Being trans is treated as inherently political. And that's hard for somebody who wants to go into a field as somebody that's unbiased. I think that I am capable and willing to put news out there without any sort of political angle. But I fear that because I'm trans, I'm perceived as having that implicit bias. And that feels unfair to me.

GILGER: So when you talk about your colleagues being concerned about even being able to cover events, whether or not it's, you know, the perception of how they might cover them, what are the concerns there? This has to do with, you know, logistical things, often like ID, like, you know, just being safe.

LEGAY: Yeah, I remember very specifically, one of our staff, one of our photographers, I believe, wanted to go to an event — the memorial. And they were worried because the name on their press pass is not the same name that they have on their ID. And I've heard different concerns about that from my staff, and that's just a barrier to entry with journalism that I think people who aren't trans don't even consider.

GILGER: So, I mean, obviously, you talked about some of the stories and the media coverage spurring you to want to do this, right? To speak out. Do you think that there is an important perspective that you might be able to bring to journalism as somebody who's trans?

LEGAY: A lot of this coverage that I do see that I don't think has been done very well about trans people, just doesn't treat trans people as human beings.

And I think, you know, that's a problem. You see that with any form of representation, where I think that having someone in the newsroom to call out how certain identities are being covered is important. In general, I just think that having trans people in the newsroom is necessary for that representation, because I think it's a lot harder to treat trans people as topics, as things to scapegoat, because that's hot in the media right now.

It's a lot harder to think of trans people that way. When you have trans people that you work with and, you know, and that you understand their perspectives because they're human beings.

GILGER: ... There's been a conversation in journalism and in newsrooms, I think, where, you know, we talk about not being biased, right. Like this ide being unbiased. Which I think the new generation of journalism students like yourself might question and sort of say, like, "We're all biased about something and we need to be transparent, not unbiased."

I wonder what you make of that in light of this argument you're making. Like, you know, it used to be you might say to somebody who's involved in an issue, "Well, you can't cover that issue because you're too invested." What do you think of that?

LEGAY: I think it's difficult. When I was writing this, I felt very emotional. And that was odd to me because this was the first thing that I've ever written that wasn't a news or feature piece. I never feature my own voice, and that felt very odd and wrong to me. And in all honesty, I don't write about trans people very much.

I mostly write about environmental topics or local Flagstaff news. So that is a question. But at the same time, I feel like a lot of the people covering news about trans people right now are biased in the sense that they are ignorant to a lot of these issues that are happening. It goes both ways.

And I think that I would much rather rely on somebody who's in the community, and maybe they do have some personal ties and emotions, but any good journalist would be able to get past that if they know what they're talking about. I would much prefer that than to read something by somebody who doesn't know what they're talking about and is ignorant. Because then they can't put out the truth, which is, at the end of the day, the journalist's job.

GILGER: Yeah, that's a really interesting perspective. And in the end, what you're doing here, you say is a thank you. Like saying thank you for telling these stories, these people like me who might be worried about doing so.

LEGAY: Yeah, absolutely. Because I think what has inspired me to come out specifically in a professional journalistic setting and write things under my chosen name is that I want to be like the trans people I see around me in journalism. And so it was a thank you for almost being braver than I was before. And a thank you for inspiring me.