Dear Reader,

A few weeks ago, I shared with you the good news that our Editor-at-Large Kang-Chun Cheng was one of eight global finalists in the Emerging Journalists category of the inaugural Stringer Awards.

Unfortunately, I have bad news: The same week KC received the honor, a Russian missile landed mere yards from her convoy in Sloviansk, Ukraine. While everyone was safe (KC made it to #SEJ2026!), her camera equipment was damaged and needs to be replaced.

This attack on KC reflects a broader, more alarming trend: More journalists and media workers were killed in 2025 than in any other year since the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) began collecting data more than three decades ago.

KC has taken considerable personal risk to file dispatches on global public health, climate justice, and Trump’s impact on the Global South for us from some of the most hostile regions in the world: In Ukraine, four journalists were killed by Russian military drones, the highest annual number of journalist deaths in the war since 15 were killed in 2022. In Sudan, another country that KC covered, nine journalists and media workers were killed in 2025.

That is why today, on World Press Freedom Day, we are launching a fundraiser with a goal of $6,500 to support KC’s crucial work.

We are launching this campaign as part of Give in May, a national campaign to support organizations serving the Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) community during AANHPI Heritage Month (KC is proudly Taiwanese American!)

Thanks to supporters like you, we believe we can easily hit our $6,500 goal. Will you help us?

• $15 can cover one month of Photo Mechanic, a software that KC uses to organize, manage, and export her photos

• $50 can cover one hour of work between KC and our photo editor

• $150 can cover one year of Photo Mechanic

• $650 can cover the cost of a used Canon EOS 5D Mark IV body

• $1,000 can cover the reporting expenses of one project

P.S. Share your support on social media by telling your friends and family to support The Xylom for #GiveInMay #WorldPressFreedomDay!

Warmly,
Laasya Shekhar
Managing Editor

✨ NEWS BEHIND THE NEWS

• 🗒️ Thank you so much to everyone who filled in our audience survey! We will notify the two lucky respondents selected to receive a $50 gift card.

• ☠️ WUFT cited our award-winning story on how the United States' failure to ratify the Stockholm Convention has led to the toxic pesticide paraquat leaking into the global food supply chain and harming Nigerian farmers. One of the reporting project producers, Rose Schnabel, is our alum! Read more here.

🍑 A SOUTHERN FLAIR

• PORT ARTHUR, Texas — Texas’ Gulf Coast Has a Health Problem: Benzene Emissions Are Among the Highest in the Nation (Elena Bruess, Capital & Main)

  “It’s not just an immediate impact, but a multigenerational toxic harm that we experience because of emissions like benzene and all of these other petrochemicals,” says Shiv Srivastava, policy director for Fenceline Watch, a Houston-based environmental justice organization.

• CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — Corpus Christi Plans to Declare a ‘Water Emergency.’ What Does That Mean? (Dylan Baddour, Inside Climate News; Neena Satija and Emily Salazar, KEDT)

  “The industry will never reveal their cards,” said Drew Molly, former chief operating officer of Corpus Christi Water, “because it’s highly competitive.” 

  Molly said companies have been at work for months developing plans to absorb cuts in their water supply. Those plans aren’t public. 

• BISCAYNE NATIONAL PARK, Fla. — Working To Restore Biscayne Bay (Jan Wesner Childs, National Parks Traveler)

  Biscayne Bay hit rock bottom with a fish kill in 2020 that stunned residents who until then had little idea — or will to change — what was simmering beneath their beloved bay. 

  “That really triggered a huge community outcry and, I think for the very first time, brought the community together to understand how precious the bay was,” said Todd Crowl, director of the Institute of Environment at Florida International University (FIU) in Miami. 

🗺️ WHAT ELSE WE'RE READING

• ST. CLAIR COUNTY, Mich. — Unfounded Health Concerns Are Powering a Solar Backlash (Anna Clark, ProPublica)

  “We need a responsible neutral party like the Michigan Public Service Commission to review these projects based on facts, not fear or falsehoods,” says Clara Ostrander. Ostrander had hoped a solar project would help protect two farmsteads in Milan Township that have been in her family for over 150 years.

• CHICAGO — Trump’s DEI purge reaches farm country? Women picked for soybean board all replaced by men (Karl Plume, Reuters)

  This is how the dual state in this context operates—science, even in its weakened state, limps along, and the contours of what is science fall under ideological control, while key institutions pretend it’s all business as usual. 

• The Rise of the Vichy Scientists (Gregg Gonsalves, The Nation)

  “The money that is going toward this largely is being borne by people who may never, ever step into the field, may never go into a duck blind, may never go out to a hunting stand,” said Mark Oliva, managing director of public affairs at the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a trade group for the firearms industry.

• The strange reason why wildlife agencies want Americans to buy more guns (Benji Jones, Vox)

  “The money that is going toward this largely is being borne by people who may never, ever step into the field, may never go into a duck blind, may never go out to a hunting stand,” said Mark Oliva, managing director of public affairs at the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a trade group for the firearms industry.

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