Representing a Dying Breed at the White House Correspondents' Dinner
That’s the part people don’t always see when they look at events like this. The gowns, the photos, the optics of power and proximity. Underneath all of it is an industry that has been hollowing out.
I got my dress for $68 from Rent the Runway.
The fabric is thinner than I hoped.
Not that anyone at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner would comment, but it says something about how I got here. A few borrowed pieces. A connection. A newsroom that doesn’t have a stylist, makeup artist or a budget for appearances like this. Just enough to show up.
I’m a local reporter.
Right now, our newsroom has four reporters. We’re supposed to be hiring one more. We cover millions of people across multiple counties. On Monday, I shadowed a local political candidate as they knocked on doors. Last Saturday, I moderated a candidate forum in another jurisdiction entirely. On Tuesdays, I usually go to council meetings — but because I cover multiple jurisdictions, I wake up and check the agendas to decide who needs to see me more that day. Last week, I got a scoop: I found out Amazon was the end user of a massive data center project dividing a county. I spend almost every day trying to make sense of policies that are often decided far above the communities that live with them.
In our tiny newsroom, we collaborate heavily. We stretch everything. And somehow, we still manage to do the job. But I remember when the newsroom had nearly 20 reporters.
And preparing to step into a room like the White House Correspondents’ Dinner makes me feel the gap.
I feel it in the scale. In the resources. In the quiet pang of envy my gut has understanding that some newsrooms in that room have hundreds, sometimes thousands, of reporters, entire teams dedicated to topics I’m covering alone. The industry hasn’t just shrunk. It’s consolidated. And if you’re a local reporter right now, it can feel like you represent something that’s slowly disappearing.
A dying breed.
That’s the part people don’t always see when they look at events like this. The gowns, the photos, the optics of power and proximity. Underneath all of it is an industry that has been hollowing out for years. Newsrooms closing. Reporters laid off. Beats disappearing. And yet the work hasn’t gone away. If anything, it’s gotten harder. And more important.
My beat is Maryland politics, which is never really just local and never really just politics.
The decisions that shape people’s lives — job loss, rising utility bills, access to services, the strain on local governments — are often driven by federal policy and international pressures. In a place like the DMV, federal decisions land in your yard and your neighbors’.
I see it in food lines, the ones I visited multiple times during the record-breaking government shutdown.
I see it in the unemployed and retired National Institutes of Health workers who still protest federal cuts almost every weekend, though the cameras are long gone.
I see it in utility prices rising as the war rages on and local infrastructure struggles to keep up with sharing a grid with the data center capital of the world.
I see it in frustration of local government officials, scrambling to respond to decisions they frequently remind us they didn’t make.
Those are the stories we cover. Those are the stories I carry with me into a room like the correspondents dinner.
I hear people plan to wear “Free Press” pins this year. A statement. A signal of solidarity. I understand it. I believe in it. And I’ve worked in places where press freedom didn’t exist, and its complete absence left the public fending for themselves, by themselves.
And yet I feel a tension.
Apart from my fear of poking holes in this rented dress, it’s hard to talk about a free press when you’re watching the industry contract in real time. When talented journalists are losing their jobs. When your newsroom is doing everything it can just to maintain coverage.
Freedom can’t only mean protection from external pressure. It also means having the resources to actually do the work. And right now, that part feels fragile.
As a Black journalist, that fragility cuts deeper. The opportunities that are shrinking never fully stabilized for people like me in the first place.
So I’ve adapted. I’ve changed my style, learned new formats, built an audience in ways that weren’t expected of reporters before. I’ve done what I had to do to keep going. Because the alternative isn’t really an option.
There’s a conversation happening across the industry about independence, about going out on your own, building something new. I’ve thought about it.
But there’s also a reason institutions still matter.
Some of the interviews I’ve done have left men red in the face, screaming threats at me. Others have caused people to plaster my face online, hoping to drive hatred my way. In those moments, having an institution behind you, however frail, matters. Legal protection isn’t just a perk. Some days it’s the only way this job can be done.
So I’ve stayed. And I’ve balanced. And I’ve kept showing up.
That’s what this dinner represents to me.
Yes, it’s glamorous. Yes, there’s proximity to power. But more than anything, I need to show up. Show up as a local reporter in a room that isn’t always built for me. Show up carrying stories that don’t always make it into national conversations. Show up knowing that the work matters, even when the structure around it feels like it’s crumbling.
I don’t know what comes next. I don’t know how long before layoffs or circumstances change my course. But right now, I’m here, on behalf of the people in these counties. The ones who feel the impact of policy. The ones whose stories don’t stop just because a newsroom shrinks.
So I’ll go to the dinner.
I’ll put on this beautiful red dress and admire how the colors accentuate my dark skin.
And I’ll show up.
Because that’s what I’ve been doing. That’s what we do.
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