MEMBER SPOTLIGHT: JAMES BURNETT

Could you tell us who you are and what it is that you do?

I’m the founding editor and managing director of The Trace, a nonprofit journalism organization dedicated to reporting on gun violence. Even if you haven’t heard of us, there’s a chance you’ve read a Trace article or investigation via our partners — The Trace co-publishes stories with outlets like the Washington Post, the Guardian, The Atlantic, and The New Yorker. Family brought me to Charlottesville in 2017, and these days, most of my time is spent on strategy and fundraising. My fearless colleagues in the newsroom, who are now spread across nine cities, do the vital work of shining a light on gun violence every day, even (especially) when the rest of the media is focused on other issues. 

What do you love about the work?

Greg will find this answer ironic, since I have twice missed my deadline for completing this questionnaire. But I really do enjoy letting people know about The Trace, its unique mission, and the amazing team that produces our coverage. Through my job, I also get to meet smart, passionate people who are trying to find ways to end a crisis that’s tempting to tune out or give up on. Those conversations are really inspiring. 

How did you arrive at this point in your career? What’s your backstory?

I grew up in a small coal mining town in Pennsylvania that didn’t have a lot going for it (I now realize), but was a place where people felt comfortable leaving their doors unlocked. I can remember being in middle school and my mom letting me roam wherever the day took me and my friends. Later, I was in my first job when Columbine happened. My younger brothers were still in high school at the time. When Sandy Hook happened, I had a young child of my own. After those events, like a lot of people, I stopped taking safety for granted. And as I read more about gun violence, I realized that in too many parts of our country, shootings end or reshape lives every day. 

I went into journalism because I like to write, and became an editor because I like collaborating and mentoring. I was lucky enough to get to work for magazines that I had admired as a reader. But over time it felt like my work wasn’t really making a difference. Building a team to fill the gaps in reporting on gun violence was an opportunity to tap into journalism’s power as a tool for change. We launched The Trace in 2015, the day after the mass shooting at Mother Emanuel in Charleston. 

For the first several years, I tried to juggle steering our coverage and shaping individual stories and raising the money to scale and sustain our impact. I hung on to that dual role a little too long, but now The Trace has an amazing editor in chief, and I stick to finding supporters willing to stand with our journalists.   

Has there been a light switch moment, a turning point (or two), professionally &/or personally along the way?

I can’t point to a single lightswitch moment or turning point for The Trace, but we’ve been fortunate that about once a year, we have a smaller breakthrough that keeps us believing that things are going to work out: our first big publishing partnership, our first multi-year grant, a key hire or board appointment. The throughline to all of those little victories was that we absolutely did NOT accomplish them on our own — they happened because someone was willing to believe in us. 

Who has been your greatest influence?

The Trace has been unabashedly influenced by the pioneers of the nonprofit news movement to which we proudly belong: Organizations like ProPublica, for the rigor and ambitiousness of its reporting, and issue-focused newsrooms like The Marshall Project, Grist, and ChalkBeat, which showed that when you give journalists the time and space to dig into a single subject, they unearth facts that would otherwise remain buried. I will also be forever indebted to my boss at New York magazine, Adam Moss, who taught us all that there are infinite ways to tell stories and engage readers. Finally – and I know this sounds hokey, but I guess I’m okay with that? – I am influenced by my four children. their curiosity, their optimism, their open-heartedness, their joy. 

What are you currently working on, excited about, looking forward to?

Gun violence is often misperceived as intractable and inevitable, which lets our leaders off the hook when they fail to do enough about it. The Trace just launched a newsletter, The Trajectory, focused on solutions to the crisis. It’s a way to use reporting to show that a safer country is possible. We wanted to do something like this years ago, but it’s finally out in the world, and it’s been exciting to see how subscribers are embracing it. (Maybe there’s a lesson in there, about not giving up on the ideas you don’t get to pursue right away?)

What are you reading these days?

I am in an embarrassing phase of not finishing a lot of the books I start. Right now, for fun, I’m part of the way through “Beautiful Ruins” (the cover blurb says it’s a “literary masterpiece”; my wife says it’s a beach read). For work, I’m listening to “Locking Up Our Own.” And with luck, this will be the summer that I at least crack open David Grann’s “Killers of the Flower Moon,” which has been on my list for years.