When Hilda Gurdian’s reporters at La Noticia started covering ICE action and protests in North Carolina, her team gathered emergency contacts for staff members. They also connected with an attorney in case any of their journalists were arrested.

At Chicago Public Media, where the reporting team was covering similar activity, Chief Partnerships Officer Tracy Brown said the company chose to add extra security to their office building.

These news leaders are not alone in thinking seriously about ways to keep their reporters safe. As they shared during a recent panel at the LMA Local News Summit, news organizations across the country are facing real, day-to-day threats while practicing journalism. From encountering teargas to being arrested while doing their jobs, journalists are increasingly at risk.

“As we send them out, we have to keep in mind that we want to protect them — but also make sure they’re prepared for some of these things,” Tracey Williams-Dillard from the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder said about sending journalists, especially newer ones, out into potentially dangerous reporting situations. “If you’re going to cover the story, fear can’t be a part of what stops you from telling it.”

Joel Simon, executive director of the Journalism Protection Initiative at CUNY’s Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism, outlined the gravity of these times during a presentation at the summit.

“I’ve seen democracy under attack around the world, and I’ve seen how journalists react to those moments,” he said. “Obviously, they’re moments we’re living here in this country now.”

Helping journalists assess and prepare for risk is part of Simon’s goal at the Journalism Protection Initiative. In addition to teaching future journalists how to operate safely and effectively in an increasingly adversarial environment, Simon and his team help news organizations create safety plans.

Simon said creating an organization-wide safety plan is the “most essential thing” news leaders can do to manage and respond to current threats.

“You’ll feel more in control of the situation,” he said. “It sends a really important message to your staff that, if you’re in a leadership role, that you are concerned about this and you’re taking it seriously.”

From identifying threats to developing responses, this guide includes five steps on how to create a plan to keep your team safe, healthy and able to continue the critical reporting necessary to support our democracy.

Tracy Brown, Tracey Williams-Dillard, Eric Barnes, Hilda Gurdian and Frank Mungeam sit at the front of a room for a panel about reporting on ICE and protests during the LMA Local News Summit on March 11, 2026. Photo by Nina Joss.

Ask questions and think holistically

The first step to building a safety plan is to ask questions to gather an overall understanding of the broad threat environment taking place and its potential impacts.

Simon encouraged news leaders to gather with their leadership teams and think through questions such as:

  • What’s the story?
  • What could go wrong?
  • How likely is it to happen?
  • How big would the impact be?
  • How can we reduce that likelihood or impact?
  • How will we respond if this happens?

Simon said that journalists are well-equipped to think in this way.

“This is kind of what we do, like we ask questions if we don’t know a lot about something,” he said. “We have all these skills that actually make us really, really good at doing safety planning if we just focus a little bit and have some structure in order to go about this.”

After laying out these questions, newsrooms can dive deeper into each one.

Identify sources of harm

When considering different possibilities of potential harm, Simon encouraged newsrooms to consider four main areas of risk: physical, digital, psychological and legal. From physical injury to stress and burnout to regulatory threats for non-profits or ownership control of for-profits, there are many specific possibilities within these categories.

A slide showing types of risk from Joel Simon’s presentation, “Creating A Safety Plan,” at the LMA Local News Summit in New York City on March 11. Image courtesy of Joel Simon.

Simon said it’s important to remember that risks are not ‘one size fits all.’ He said each news organization and each individual’s risk factors depend on their identity (which he defined as how they perceive themselves) and their profile (how others perceive them).

“A news organization that’s very immigrant-focused that covers immigrant issues is going to have a very different risk profile than, say, the local TV station which might not be perceived in that way,” Simon said. “You really cannot do this (assessment) generically. It has to be based on your institution.”

Similarly, Simon said different journalists will have different levels of risk depending on the stories they are covering and how their identities and profiles relate to the situations.

Assess your risk

Once you determine your risks, the next step is to plot each risk based on how likely it is and how serious the impact would be if it were to happen. Simon suggested using a matrix that can help you visualize risk levels.

A slide showing the risk assessment chart from Joel Simon’s presentation, “Creating A Safety Plan,” at the LMA Local News Summit in New York City on March 11. Image courtesy of Joel Simon.

“You have to think about, ‘what are the specific risks that you face?’ and then you put them on this chart,” Simon said. “You’re going to come up with one or two that are in that red zone, and you’re going to come up with a couple that are (in the other sections).”

This simple tool will help you focus your energy where it matters most. Although having many risks can be overwhelming, prioritizing them in this way can help newsrooms create a more informed and manageable response.

Decide on mitigations

After analyzing which risks are your top priorities, you can decide on methods to reduce the likelihood or consequences of your highest risks.

For example, Simon said that if you identify covering protests as your newsroom’s highest risk situation, you might put some of the following strategies in place:

  • Train staff on their legal rights
  • Have a lawyer on call
  • Direct reporters to write emergency phone numbers on their hands or arms
  • Instruct reporters to turn off facial recognition on their phones to prevent unwanted access
  • Prepare journalists with protective equipment

For each situation or each type of risk, the mitigation protocols will be different.

Share your plan — and keep it dynamic

Once you have the prioritized newsroom risks and defined responses, build your safety plan by putting it all together. Document and share the plan in a way your news organization can access it, and make sure it includes all of the pieces your team determined: mitigations, contacts, check-ins, red lines and more.

Simon said safety planning isn’t a one-time exercise. Instead, it’s a cycle you run continuously: before, during and after an assignment. You should check-in to see what worked, what didn’t and what protocols need to be updated or improved the next time.

“If you do this kind of exercise — if you build this muscle and you build a culture of safety within your organization —  in this climate, you’re probably going to have to do this again like every six months,” he said.

As journalists face a changing landscape, Simon said that one of the most important things to remember is our important role in it.

“I think by defending our rights, by keeping our people safe, by doing the best possible job we can as journalists in a really, really difficult environment — we are defending and supporting democracy,” he said.

The Journalism Protection Institute recently released a detailed Safety Planning Toolkit that maps the current landscape and provides a more detailed process for building a safety plan. Get the toolkit here (select Safety Planning Toolkit). See other safety resources from the Journalism Protection Initiative here.