Johnson has served as managing editor since 2014 and is a 29-year journalist who has edited daily and weekly publications in Colorado, Alaska and Wyoming.
That newsroom leaders are even contemplating this question is a little concerning for our already struggling industry.
While we would be hard-pressed to find another presidential administration that has been more damaging and threatening to the First Amendment and America’s free press, allowing President Donald Trump’s relentless attack on the Fourth Estate to influence how we do our jobs would be more devastating.
The simple and obvious answer is we treat Trump as any other public figure and cover what’s newsworthy. With his history of baseless and outright wrong claims, leaving office doesn’t diminish Trump’s ability to skew a large segment of public opinion and perception. Allowing it to continue without a free press to fact check isn’t an acceptable alternative.
The challenge is not allowing bias against or for Trump to cloud our news judgment in reporting on newsworthy events. Nor should we pander to any particular slant on how our readers consume and interpret the news, despite increasing social media pressure to do so.
As president, Trump has made plenty of news and as a former president is likely to continue to be a newsmaker. Striking that balance of how much weight to give his sometimes outlandish and baseless claims is going to be an evolving challenge.
On one hand, allocating too many resources and attention to storylines that push agendas more than report news can cause even more distrust and derision of the press. Ignoring them altogether poses the same risk.
When I saw this question, the first analogy that came to mind is an infection.
If a person develops an infection, not giving it any attention and ignoring it only allows it to fester, grow and become a larger problem. But without proper medical treatment, too much prodding, poking, scratching and rubbing can potentially spread the infection and also make it worse.
In this scenario, journalism is the closest thing we have to that proper treatment.
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