Evan Urquhart didn’t set out to fight a fight. Instead, he set out to tell the truth. Three years ago, while he was working as writer and commenting community manager at Slate, Urquhart found himself frustrated by the lack of trans representation in mainstream news despite the issue’s political prominence. He decided to take matters into his own hands.
The result was Assigned Media, an independent news site serving the trans community with everything from deeply reported features to a monthly comic to a rant column. “We are coming from a perspective that trans people deserve to exist and thrive,” he says.
Urquhart’s insistence on following the facts, no matter how uncomfortable, has made him one of the leading voices in transgender media coverage today. “There’s definitely a throughline of doing things that I think are hard — or that other people say are hard and not worth trying — because I think no one else is going to, or will do it as well,” he says.
Now at MIT as a Knight Science Journalism Fellow, Urquhart is honing in on US v. Skrmetti, a lawsuit challenging Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors. The case could decide whether states can block transgender healthcare. But Urquhart sees something even bigger at stake: how medical evidence itself is interpreted—and possibly perverted—in court.
I sat down with Urquhart to chat about why he launched Assigned Media, how he navigates the political weaponization of trans coverage, and what’s on the line in US v. Skrmetti. (The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.)
Celina Zhao: What failures did you see in mainstream news or legacy outlets that made you want to start from scratch for Assigned Media?
Evan Urquhart: For a long time, I — and many other transgender writers — noticed freelance work drying up. By the summer of 2022, I got frustrated. We have two major political parties, and one of those two party’s top legislative priority has to do with transgender people: to ban trans girls from sports, to ban transgender healthcare, to define women in certain ways. I made the argument to two or three different editors that, by all rights, a news organization should have a writer dedicated to covering this. It was very clear how far I got down the road that I was onto something.
I was lying in bed after I’d gotten a final no, and it just occurred to me: you need to just do it yourself. I gave it some time because sometimes you have wild 2 a.m. ideas. But I couldn’t let go of it.
I launched in October of 2022, and I gave myself six months to see if this was anything. Because most of these things don’t go anywhere. But it was very clear, even in the first month or two, that there was a lot of interest, and that this was filling a niche that people wanted to see filled.
CZ: Why is it called Assigned Media?
EU: It’s a joke on assigned sex at birth. Assigned media at birth. I’m really proud of this name. It has an almost boring and mainstream sound to it. But then there’s a trans joke that slides under the radar.
CZ: What sort of impact are you trying to achieve?
EU: Before the election, one of my primary focuses was on helping mainstream journalists understand whether they were being misled, or where they might be allowing activist groups to frame the narrative in ways that they weren’t realizing.
After the election, while that is still important to me, I am more resonating with people from the community who feel that our coverage is giving them hope and giving them stories of resistance and protest. We want to show people that they’re strong and that they can get through this.
CZ: Unfortunately, some people will conflate lived experience with activism, which is completely different from journalism. At Assigned Media, how do you approach criticism from people who don’t truly read the story and only see who the reporter is?
EU: My response, individually, is to get up on my high horse and list all of the ways in which you could never call me an activist. I’ve never gone to a trans rights protest except to cover it as a journalist. I’ve never joined or donated to any transgender organization. So at that point, if someone is calling me an activist, it’s about my identity, or it’s because I have opinions.
I would lean a little bit away from doing that for the website. There’s a really proud tradition of civil rights reporting for black communities. I would much rather be seen as in that tradition than as trying to distance myself unnecessarily or too much from it.
But we hold ourselves to a very high factual standard. If someone points out a correction, it doesn’t matter how rude they’re being. It doesn’t if they’re calling us every name in the book. We say thank you, and we run the correction immediately. Even The New York Times has commented on our pieces. What we are doing is journalism, and if you find a fact that’s wrong, we want to correct it. But you’re not going to find a fact that’s wrong.
CZ: What was it like being there in person on the day of the US v. Skrmetti hearing?
EU: On the one hand, it’s just an absolute dream to be a journalist with a press credential in the room with the Supreme Court hearing oral arguments. And to have that also be at this time, which is characterized by loss of rights and a rollback of acceptance — it creates this feeling that can’t be fully reconciled.
I don’t think it helps anyone for me to not take a little bit of joy in my work, and the fact is that this is an incredible milestone to do something like that. At the same time, I have so much grief for what’s already happening, for what I fear will happen with the case and with the community. Those two things just both exist.
CZ: And this case has a potentially huge scope.
EU: Yeah, I think people see it as a trans case, and there is a lot more that people haven’t realized. The expectation is that the justices will rule in favor of the states and allow them to ban gender-affirming care, and medical evidence will not play a significant role. Now, the question I’m really interested in is how the US courts approach, or choose not to approach, medical evidence.
What does it mean if states can declare that they’re acting for the public health if the evidence is that they’re doing the opposite of that? Does this mean that states could ban vaccines? Does this mean that states could declare orange juices against public health, and ban orange juice? Where would we be if the courts aren’t interested in saying: “Well, what does the evidence actually say?” What would be the limiting principle in terms of using public health laws in ways that harm people rather than help them?
CZ: Are you tired? I realize the answer is definitely yes, but how much more do you have in you?
EU: Oh, that’s a great question. That’s a better version of the question that people usually ask, “Are you worried about burnout?” The way you phrase that question is much closer to how I think about it. Everyone that I know who has done this and is not doing it now says it’s because of burnout. I very consciously don’t think of that as something that could be avoided or that I’m immune to.
Instead, I think of it as doing my piece of the work while I can do it. I’m going to do it as long as it’s fun, as long as it’s satisfying, as long as I feel I’m like I’m effective. And then I’m going to find something else and trust that the people who do it next will do a great job, too.
Celina Zhao is a student in MIT’s Graduate Program in Science Writing.
You must be logged in to post a comment.