By Kata Stevens
When does this become news?
It’s not an unfamiliar question for journalists who cover social change stories. But it’s been a big one lately for Cassidy Hettesheimer and her colleagues at The Minnesota Star Tribune. In a state where transgender people have a long history of support, new conversations are arising after multiple executive orders from the U.S. President have challenged those rights.
“We have a lot of theoretical conversations about — when are we making something bigger than it is? Putting fuel into the flame? When are we reacting appropriately?” she said. “Knowing what your (newsroom) philosophy is and plan of approach is never a bad thing.”
The topic of covering transgender people in sports was the central theme of a panel at the 2025 Associated Press Sports Editors Summer Conference in June in Minneapolis. The panel was moderated by Erik Hall, APSE second vice president and managing editor of The Telegraph (Alton, Illinois).
“It’s really kind of interesting that we’re in this moment where we all have to pay attention to the existence of trans kids in sports, but I think that gets into a question that transcends sports, which is, why are we talking about this now?” said Christina Kahrl, sports editor of The San Francisco Chronicle. “Looking at the positive impact or the negative impact or the impact period of adopting trans inclusion in K through 12 sports (in California), we’ve had it for decades, and nothing bad happened.”
Covering the LGBTQ+ community shouldn’t require any more care than any other story, but it definitely functions as a reminder of what journalistic responsibilities entail.
“It shouldn’t be an unusual or outlandish thing,” Kahrl said. “It shouldn’t be seen as news necessarily in itself, but we are getting into an environment where certainly some people and some outlets are going to say, ‘This is a story just because a trans person exists in a public space doing public things,’ and we need to stop that.”
Ash Tifa, a Minneapolis-based human rights advocate and community organizer, rounded out the panel, speaking from an activism and legal perspective, equipping the audience with tools to best approach an experience that can’t be summarized but is often overthought.
“Sports is such an inherently unifying experience for people, for athletes,” Tifa said. “And I think reporting on trans athletes in sports allows reporters or editors or news outlets the chance to give these people a chance to humanize themselves, a chance to give themselves familiarity.
“Whether they’re adults competing nationally or in college, or kids competing in high school, or younger, these are just people trying to live their best lives like anyone else. We’re in a moment of extraordinary, relentless attacks on the transgender community, and that has brought so much unwanted attention to our community, our families, our personal lives, our safety, and there’s so much negative attention paid to who we are, who we choose to be, how we present ourselves to the world, and not enough positive representation in just living a normal life like all of us do.”
While attacks on the transgender community are currently prevalent, as educational systems and professional organizations examine their policies, the core principles that have allowed trans kids to participate in Little League and the Girl Scouts are a guide.
“We inculcate this idea that sports convey virtues,” Kahrl said. “That doesn’t belong to just cisgender kids. It belongs to (all) kids.”
And while the conversation can become overblown, it’s crucial that it not be cut down. Tifa said emphasizing the small number of trans athletes at all levels is much more harmful than helpful to their access to sport.
“Yes, trans people, we make up 1, 2, 3% of the population. That’s fine,” Tifa said. “That kind of narrative that seems harmless, toothless, (but) is actually really destructive and really harmful. That minimizes the attacks that are happening to us.”
While the panel primarily focused on the issues that face transgender athletes and sports personnel, there exists an undeniable intersectionality with other sex-based atrocities that have fed the news cycle in the last decade.
“Policing gender is obviously going to play out under negative consequences for all female athletes,” Kahrl said. “It seems incredible to me that after (convicted sex offender) Larry Nassar, we would have any states proposing to go back to genital inspections of girls, and have … guys like Larry Nassar who are in charge of that. Did we learn nothing in the last 10 years?”
But how does a sports desk handle these deeply nuanced situations?
These stories are best told with collaboration and a knowledge of who and where the audience exists, acknowledging that sports coverage can and should be a multilateral effort — for buy-in, but also for accuracy.
“Having a politics reporter, having a gender and equity reporter; people who are outside of our little corner of the journalism universe,” Kahrl suggested. “Where’s the reader? Who does the reader identify with?”
“We are 30 years out from a whole generation of us being exterminated and allowed to die by the federal government, right?” Tifa said, referring to the AIDS crisis of the 1980s and ’90s. “Attacks on the trans community are an unprecedented phenomenon that is currently happening, but to say it only affects trans people is a fallacy. Trans people have families and communities, loved ones.”
