“You’ll love this story,” Mary Gordon tells me. We’re sitting in her Toronto office and I’m interviewing her about the program she started. Called Roots of Empathy, it sends instructors into classrooms to teach children how to understand each other. She tells me about a man who recently contacted her to say that after taking one of her sessions as a boy, he realized he was a bully. Now a teacher, he tries to prevent others from acting the way he did. Gordon thinks I’ll enjoy this tale because she’s found me out: I used to be a teacher—not that I was planning on telling her that when I walked in.

When I had asked her questions only someone who had studied the education curriculum would know, she seemed impressed. So I had to admit: “Well, I used to be a teacher.” It seemed irrelevant; it was another life that had nothing to do with my current one. I wanted to do my job as a journalist—not bang out my past for a stranger, as I’ve done hundreds of times. Gordon didn’t ask me any of this, though; she was just happy she could speak to me as a peer. And I realized that my past career could help in my current work.

Life experiences, professional or not, allow journalists to insert themselves and their knowledge directly into their stories. But this comes with positives and negatives: knowledge is helpful, but avoiding bias is a challenge.

We trust certain journalists as experts because of their previous professions. Author and journalist Michael Lewis, famous for books such as The Big Short, Moneyball and The Blind Side (all of which have been made into major motion pictures), was a bond salesman. “Twenty five years ago,” he wrote in New Republic, “I quit a job on Wall Street to write a book about Wall Street.” Meanwhile, Vanity Fair correspondent William Langewiesche, a former professional pilot, writes about airplane crashes from the perspective of a journalist. He looks at the lives of the people while using his aviation background to explain what happened and the technology involved.

Sharing her experiences is something Deborah Reid, who worked as a chef for 26 years, believes is an important part of her work as a writer. She has a particular interest in women who work in professional kitchens. For an essay on the sexism of the chef uniform, which is made to fit men, she interviewed three women—but much of her knowledge came from her own experience. “At first, that was just fine by me…I didn’t want to be different.” she wrote. Later, though, Reid realized she was abandoning her gender in an effort to maintain her status as a chef.

But being too close to a subject can also make writing more difficult. Journalists’ views can cloud the way they write or speak about a topic. That was another worry I had in the Gordon interview. I wanted to hear about her program and think about it critically, not let my biases throw me off. I needed to listen to her plan and decide, as an outsider, if it was viable, without getting pulled into what I wanted to believe as a teacher: that teaching empathy is possible. I had to evaluate, as a journalist, if it really was.

Lisa Bendall, who worked in the disability field for many years before going into journalism and whose husband lives with a disability, believes writing what you know has its “challenges and its upsides.” Although her background gives her credibility with sources, the desire to protect her expert status means she needs more control over the final product. She says, “The last thing you want to do is see your article in print and there is some horrific insertion that I would never want to be associated with.”

By the time my article came out in This magazine, I couldn’t remember why I thought it was so important not to reveal my background to my sources. Gordon had told me it was helpful to know I was a teacher. “That, to me, is a bonus in anyone who is interviewing me, that I feel that we are on the same human path,” she said. She shares information about her program differently depending on who’s asking.

The headline was “In their shoes,” based on an anecdote I included in the story. A teacher I worked with printed out illustrations of shoes and had kids step onto one another’s when there was a conflict. I hoped such real-life details gave the story credibility, as well as emotional power.

The camera captures Pina Newman and her sister Alyse directly within its frame. In October 2014, Newman is clipping her sister’s hair into sections and curling it with practiced ease in the washroom of the Winnipeg home where they grew up. The window, covered by sheer, white curtains with green squares, is visible to the side, matching the shower curtain behind them. Scattered makeup, face wash and hair care products litter the countertop—a common sight in washrooms shared by sisters. Unseen in the shot, Kevin O’Keefe, director and producer of The Transgender Project, stands outside the door asking questions.

The project began as a website that includes profiles of Canadian trans people in short video snippets. It then became a television doc series called Am I a Boy or Girl. Right now, the sisters are talking about how their relationship was affected by Pina’s transition. Pina admits, “I really made everything all about me,” while Alyse says it was confusing.

O’Keefe wanted to show the whole lives of trans people in these episodes. Having the sisters do something they’d normally be doing is less formal than a conventional Q & A and allows them to speak naturally. Pina always felt safe as a subject of the series, which premiered in October 2015 on ichannel, and thinks viewers saw the challenges alongside the positives. She has a great relationship with her sister, but she says the episode also shows that she struggles, just like everyone else.

Transgender people have started appearing more frequently in North American newspapers and magazines, on radio and TV and in documentaries. This makes sense given the timeline of activism, wrote Susan Stryker—who teaches gender and women’s studies at the University of Arizona—in her book Transgender History. Coverage of homosexuality evolved from prejudice to acceptance, and next on the list is trans rights.

For mainstream news outlets, this means journalists have to figure out how to report on a community few are familiar with, let alone part of.

Only a few years ago, stories often included insensitive remarks about trans individuals and made unfair assumptions about the community. But journalists are now becoming more sensitive to the way trans people want to be identified and the difficult issues they face, including discrimination, murder, suicide and homelessness. It’s a good start, but the trans community wants to be better integrated into the news on a regular basis, with these issues investigated and discussed in greater depth.

Journalists who produce feature stories and documentaries have the time to research and understand the trans community in a way daily news seldom can. That’s why The Transgender Project is an excellent example of reporting on trans people. Some journalists’ understanding of the trans world is growing, but a more sensitive approach to the issues is still needed in daily news.

Early reporting on gay issues parallels the evolution of trans coverage today. Before the 1960s, gay people were usually depicted as dangerous psychopaths and sexual deviants. In 1964, journalist Sidney Katz worked with James Egan, a pioneer of gay rights advocacy in Canada. With Egan’s help, Katz wrote a two-part series for Maclean’s that documented the “secret lives” of gay men in Canada. Katz introduced readers to people who were generally hidden from the public eye at the time. They are “ordinary citizens in all respects but the one that makes them criminals before the law and outcasts in society.” He raised the “homosexual problem”: that they could not live their lives the way they wanted because the criminal code made them outlaws due to their sexual orientation. They couldn’t come out if they wanted jobs and often couldn’t even secure housing. Katz wrote about Egan’s experiences, giving him an outlet for his views about the need for social change. It was one of the first articles to look at homosexuality in a positive light, but it would be years before publications began accurately reporting on the gay community on a regular basis.

Today, replace “gay” with “trans” and we find journalism gradually developing a more sophisticated—and sensitive—approach. The reporting on Jenna Talackova, which spurred trans rights in Canada much like Caitlyn Jenner did in the U.S., can be seen as a turning point. Talackova was the first Miss Universe Canada contestant to identify as transgender. Selected in 2012 to compete in the pageant, she was disqualified when organizers discovered she was a trans person. Working with a lawyer, she fought the ruling. Before the case reached the courts, the organizers reversed their decision.

Talackova made it to the top 12 and received one of the “Miss Congeniality” titles. The story led to some of the first widespread positive coverage of trans people in Canada. “She’s all congeniality, pageant ready,” wrote Nancy J. White in the Toronto Star. White quoted Talackova talking about her own life: “You don’t get the sun without the rain…That’s how my story went.”

Although many trans people resent how journalists have portrayed them in the past, coverage in Canada has improved. When there is legitimate news, mainstream outlets usually try to get to it quickly and respectfully. The Huffington Post runs blog posts by trans writers and publishes pieces on a wide range of topics related to trans issues, including discrimination in schools and violence against the community. Lisa Yeung, managing editor of lifestyle, says the site just publishes whatever editors consider newsworthy. “If a story is important,” she says, “we’ll make the effort to cover it.”

When Alberta added gender identity and gender expression to the list of categories protected by the provincial Human Rights Act in December 2015, many news outlets covered the story well. A Canadian Press report, picked up by several publications, quoted trans people, not just government officials. The Edmonton Journal’s coverage educated readers about the percentage of trans people who attempt suicide and who feel unsafe in their schools and workplaces. CBC published an article written by a trans woman involved in the announcement and included subsections explaining the reasons—such as mental health and safety—the amendment was necessary.

When Jenner appeared on the July 2015 cover of Vanity Fair, CBC ran a story with a different angle. Instead of focusing only on the celebrity, Aleksandra Sagan wrote about how different Jenner’s life is from the majority of trans people. In “Caitlyn Jenner’s transition doesn’t represent most transgender experiences,” Sagan wrote, “what’s being presented as a seemingly fairytale story is not the reality for many transgender people who face long wait lists and costly procedures that public health services don’t necessarily cover.” In a similar story Maclean’s published online, Emma Teitel recounted the widespread response on social media to the Vanity Fair story, which she says was mostly positive. “But her swift acceptance by the public isn’t typical.”

Before Jenner, Cathy Gulli of Maclean’s wrote a detailed feature on trans issues in January 2014. The idea came to her after a copy of a book called Chasing Rainbows: Exploring Gender Fluid Parenting Practices landed on her desk. She knew there was a story there, but she didn’t realize just how important it was until she got deep into reporting. The piece gives a balanced perspective on the pros and cons of allowing kids to transition, covers how parents can tell if a child might be trans and points out that it is not just a phase. The article also gets to the hard stuff: “These kids have among the highest rates of isolation, harassment, depression, addiction, self-mutilation and suicide of any population.” Gulli says this is one of the features she’s more proud of. For her, it was about “creating a platform for these families to tell their stories.” While reporting, Gulli asked her sources which pronouns they would like her to use in the story, and went with that. Some news outlets now follow guidelines on what language to use when speaking or writing about trans people. Some use recommendations created by GLAAD, a U.S.-based media monitoring organization founded by members of the LGBT community. Organizations such as the Manitoba-based Rainbow Resource Centre can also be helpful in educating staff about accuracy and awareness. CBC regularly updates its own style guide to help its journalists with trans stories and other language sensitivities.

This is helpful because some journalists don’t understand the importance of sensitive pronoun usage. Common mistakes include using transgender as a noun instead of an adjective, which reduces people to just one of their qualities; referencing a subject as being “born a man” or “born a woman”; and applying the wrong pronoun. To be fair, it can be difficult for someone who is cisgender (a term for those who identify with the gender assigned at birth) to understand why trans people are so sensitive to language. For most cisgender males, walking into a men’s washroom is just walking into a washroom. For many trans people, walking into a washroom is a daily challenge, reaffirming their difference as surely as when someone uses an incorrect pronoun.

Within the trans community, identifying someone incorrectly is no different than writing a racial slur. Mike Strobel, a Toronto Sun columnist who has drawn criticism for his writing about trans people, believes that being careful with language “is blurring an important issue with silly semantics.” His message about the trans community is not intended to offend: in a September 2015 article, he wrote, “One by one, ‘minorities’ overcome fear and bias to become accepted (more or less) by the rest of us—and even trendy.” But in this same column, he used the word “transgenders,” making the adjective into a noun. He also referred to Jenner as “nee Bruce,” even though using someone’s past name is taboo unless necessary (in this case, most people know who Jenner is). This may seem like “silly semantics” to Strobel, but to many trans people, their birth gender is not who they are, or ever really were.

Another example of improper word usage can be seen in Pamela Roth’s 2012 article “Good News for Transgenders,” which used the word “transgendered,” something that goes against many style guides today (we don’t say a gay man is “gayed”). But, it did explore an important issue—people getting fired from jobs after coming out.

Articles that identify trans people accurately can have greater impact among readers. The good news is that observers such as Christin Milloy, a journalist and trans activist, see gradual improvements, even at the conservative Sun papers. A story by Jonathan Sher in the Toronto Sun, “Suicide rate much higher for transgender Canadians: Study,” written just three years after Roth’s article, followed the guidelines on trans people while covering a difficult topic. Sher’s message: it’s not being trans that creates high suicide rates; it’s the treatment trans people receive. Another challenge—one that represents a problem for journalism in general—is diversity. There are few stories about Black or homeless members of the trans community, says gender specialist Rupert Raj. Even O’Keefe, who wanted to show a range of diversity in his series, didn’t entirely succeed. He included both older people and some who struggled financially, but most of his subjects were white.

The similar content in most trans news stories, along with legal and political changes, inspired former Toronto Life associate editor Caroline Youdan in early 2015. She wanted people to see what life was really like for a trans person in Toronto. “My Trans Life” consists of five people telling their stories. Youdan’s timing worked out well: about a month after she started working on the story, Jenner came out as a trans woman, and the international media became obsessed with trans stories.

Despite Youdan’s quest for diversity, the subjects of “My Trans Life” weren’t new faces in Canadian journalism. Alex Abramovich was a subject in a CBC documentary called Transforming Gender; Sophia Banks was featured in a video on the Maclean’s website; Savannah Burton was in The Transgender Project; and Alec Butler was the subject of articles in Now and the Star. Like O’Keefe’s series, the Toronto Life stories had upbeat endings—not necessarily the norm in the trans community. Still, it was an effective feature and, as Youdan explains, “We did the best we could in the time that we had.”

What’s the next step for reporting on trans people in Canada, according to trans people?

Pina, a nursing student, Christin, a journalist, and Casey, a writer, share their thoughts.

Pina

Christin

Casey

By Blair Mlotek and Viviane Fairbank

The front of book (FOB) consists of the first few pages of a magazine, with smaller pieces and graphics meant to ease a reader in before the long features. FOBs may have been relevant once, but today, when shorter articles and listicles are the majority of content found online, they don’t add value to a printed magazine. Leave FOB material for the website and longer features for the print edition, advises Drew Nelles, a freelance editor and writer now in New York, but formerly of Maisonneuve and The Walrus. Not everything is worth going to print anymore.

The solution to the “crisis of the front-of-book” may not be as drastic as cutting the section altogether (though some magazines, such as The Believer, have already taken that approach). Today, an FOB section simply has to be more singular than short, curated content. It has to have a theme or tone that is unique to a specific magazine, separate from the typical eclectic FOB style.

There’s The New Yorker’s Talk of the Town, for example, which Nelles believes to have “a life and a voice” different from others. Or Harper’s Magazine, with its Harper’s Index and  Readings. Those sections are more than just padding before the crux of the magazine’s content; instead, they are part of the identities of the magazines.

But most other printed magazines, which haven’t been able to brand their FOB in the same way, may have to change their approach. Nelles says that Maisonneuve, which prints longer stories in its FOB section, was never able to determine what made something “right” for FOB, as opposed to the feature; it really only came down to page space.

Catherine McIntyre handles FOB for This Magazine. To her, the FOB section has value not only for light reading material before long, text-heavy articles, but also for establishing This’s identity. “If you’re picking up a magazine and you’re reading the front section, you know what to expect to a certain extent,” McIntyre says.

McIntyre doesn’t agree that these articles are similar to web content. In fact, for This, McIntyre tries to get stories that people may have missed online. They’re not always light stories and there isn’t always a clear theme, but there is a consistency that, McIntyre says, her readers rely on. She often publishes a profile, a news story that may have been missed in daily coverage, a critical account of a certain institution and a column on feminism in the FOB section.

McIntyre thinks that readers don’t mind if the content of a magazine is similar to what’s online. The words are the same in both places, but many people still choose to read in print form. She compares it to the same romanticism that brings people to the movie theatre, even though Netflix is just a laptop away.

The argument may be old, but it applies to the entire magazine industry, including the FOB. If The New Yorker cut its Talk of the Town, McIntyre says, readers would be “unimpressed.” They would be thrown off—many wouldn’t read the magazine at all. “And yet,” she says, “you can get Talk of the Town online.”

Tell us what you think in the comments below. Should magazines get rid of the front of book? 

Leigh Stein’s boyfriend Jason threw her against the refrigerator and didn’t believe she was hurt until she showed him the bruises. They had moved to New Mexico together so she could write her book while he worked—it was the most romantic plan she had ever heard. She recounted her relationship in a BuzzFeed story about how she investigated Jason’s arrest for a stabbing incident 11 days before his death in a motorcycle accident. “I thought I’d be able to draw a clear, straight line between our visit, his crime and the accident,” she wrote, “and then the story of our lives together would finally make sense.” In the comments section, many women shared their own stories of abuse.

Stein’s story is evidence that personal journalism, which is increasingly accessible online, allows writers to explore important topics such as mental health and domestic violence in a way that has a powerful effect on readers. They’re like getting hooked on someone else’s pain. While critics of first-person narratives say they are self-indulgent and get published only when they tell a painful story, the articles resonate with readers.

Personal journalism has always been around, says BuzzFeed Canada’s Lauren Strapagiel, but the difference now is that there is so much more content out there—people can always find an experience that speaks to them. “People are going to ask for it and go looking for it, and people are going to write to meet that need.”

In an August Vice story about surviving Hurricane Katrina and living with the guilt, Megan Koester took readers through her evacuation to the present, describing how lucky she is compared to those who didn’t escape. A January piece on The Huffington Post blog by Abby King was written in the form of an apology to her children for divorcing their father: “I will forever feel guilty that we broke your home and world apart.”

These articles give readers going through the same experiences validation by showing that other people feel the same way. “On a fundamental level, we connect with stories that have a strong human component,” says Craig Silverman, Buzzfeed Canada’s editor. “From a strategic perspective, first-person stories can do well online—people share them if it’s an experience that they can relate to.”

The Huffington Post opened a Canadian office in 2011, and blog, which publishes many first-person pieces, now has 5,000 contributors. Blogs editor Sadiya Ansari says the posts contribute to the public conversation from the perspective of an individual. Although personal narratives are found most notably on the Living and Parents pages, they are in every section—even on the Business page. A tale of a woman’s miscarriage on Huffpost Parents attracted a lot of readers, and Ansari can see why: “It’s very powerful in first person because it wasn’t about what miscarriage looks like from the outside.”

But some people see these pieces as self-indulgent and an easy out for writers. Janice Tibbetts, a journalism instructor at Carleton University, says she has nothing against first-person narratives and doesn’t call herself a critic of them, but doesn’t see much growth in them for a journalist. “It’s the kind of thing I don’t see as a skill that takes a lot of time to develop.” This is the main reason she doesn’t allow her first-year students to use the first person. Writing about yourself can simply be “the path of least resistance.”

In an article attacking first-person journalism in September, Laura Bennett, a senior editor at Slate, argued that websites such as xoJane, Buzzfeed Ideas and Gawker are turning any thought or experience a writer has into a meaningless article. But, she noted, personal stories are often the only way for young journalists to get a response from publications. And the ones that gain traction are those that describe something terrible that a writer had to go through.

For freelance journalists, the personal essay is a quick way to make some cash—no research or fact-checking required. Writers who can’t afford to spend much time on each of their stories in order to make enough money to survive know they need to give a good pitch or they won’t be published. The stories that grab attention are ones about sad and painful events. Bennett quoted Jia Tolentino, Jezebel’s features editor, who says, “Writers feel like the best thing they have to offer is the worst thing that ever happened to them.”

Meanwhile, Hamilton Nolan, who wrote “The ‘Writing About Yourself’ Trap” on Gawker, wants journalists to remember that getting published doesn’t have to mean writing “sexy, salacious, crazy, wild, demeaning, shocking, depressing or self-glorifying stories.”

Despite the critics, websites find value in these stories, under the right circumstances. Souzan Michael, associate digital editor of Fashion Magazine’s online site, says she carefully decides when a first-person story will speak to a topic better than it can be told otherwise. She wants stories that are true and relatable, which can only be done “by being yourself.”

After all, first-person narratives use something we do all the time—storytelling about ourselves—to explore difficult and uncomfortable subjects. Good journalism, in other words.