In May 2020, a nation already cracked by a pandemic convulsed further as the world watched the murder of George Floyd, his final breaths captured and uploaded, looping endlessly across screens.
Digital media didn’t just amplify his murder; it made the pain unavoidable, everywhere at once, and for a fleeting moment, it seemed to wake mainstream American journalism up. Empathy became a part of American digital life in an unprecedented way: suddenly, stories about racism, police violence, and systemic injustice were not only homepage news, but treated with a solemnity, care, and nuance rarely seen. And Black-led outlets and journalists, who were driving the shift, saw a surge in attention and investment.
As someone who was just entering the industry full-time, it felt like this was how it might always be. Editors who, just weeks earlier, seemed immune to my pitches on police violence, were suddenly not only receptive but proactive. They wanted frontline dispatches and Black perspectives, and they wanted them now. That summer, the sixth-largest news website in the world commissioned me to cover protests in Chicago and Kenosha, Wisconsin. My fifth-ever professional byline, a dispatch from the night Kyle Rittenhouse shot three protestors, killing two, garnered 1 million views in 24 hours.
The story’s digital life took on a logic of its own: death threats in my DMs, emails from grateful readers who found catharsis in my words, and comments from colleagues saying my work was “necessary.” It was, in digital terms, “viral empathy”— and what a strange, exhausting thing it was. Still, it seemed necessary for a future where American journalism might best serve the country’s most vulnerable.
I didn’t yet realize how quickly tides could turn.