We need your support, and we're ready to support you, too.

We hope you had a great Thanksgiving, Leftovers Sandwich Friday, Small Business Saturday, Travel Headache Sunday, and Cyber Monday. Now it’s Giving Tuesday, and a tsunami of nonprofits urgently need your dollars.

How are you holding up?

As we at BSR ask for your support this Giving Tuesday, we want to support you in return. You’re probably hearing about how the second Trump administration will threaten American journalists, an essential pillar of our democracy. But you might not be hearing so much about how you can equip yourself to withstand these threats—because the point of undermining journalists is not to hurt the journalists. It is to hurt YOU and everyone else who relies on access to free and fair information, and make us as a society much more vulnerable to prejudice, manipulation, and control.

Journalists across the country, including the BSR team, are promising to continue our work. But it won’t matter if our audience isn’t ready to fight back, too. Here are four tips.

1) Continue your own education about the media. We often think of continuing education as a career requirement for certain professions. The truth is that we are always responsible for our own continuing education on many fronts, including our media consumption. If you use the Internet or read or watch the news (from 60 Minutes to TikTok), make sure you understand the standards, norms, methods, and ethics of journalism. Many people today don’t!

When you do this, it becomes much easier to spot rage bait, bigotry, disinformation, and authoritarianism. The more people have media literacy skills, the less power unscrupulous politicians will have.

Here are three free, easy-to-access sources I recommend to continue your media education:

The Poynter Report newsletter
WNYC’s On the Media podcast
The Unspun Podcast

2) Ask yourself: Is this designed to keep me tuned in all the time? Be wary of any media source that makes you feel as if you should ALWAYS be paying attention to it, whether that’s a social media platform, a website, or a cable news channel. Constant attention is not sustainable and it doesn’t lead to real knowledge or positive action (but it sure is profitable for corporate owners and advertisers when you can’t peel yourself away). Look for media you can consume on your schedule, whether that’s a newsletter you read at breakfast, a social-media account you check after work, or a podcast you play in the car or on the train. Avoid or minimize platforms that make you feel like there is essential breaking news at every moment. Because then it’s not about the news. It’s about keeping you plugged in so you see more ads.

At BSR, we hope you tune in on Wednesdays and Thursdays, when we send out our weekly newsletters—and any other time you want to check BSR. But wouldn’t it be weird if we expected you to be glued to our site all day and night?

3) Ask yourself: Is this an expert, or is it a pundit? Is the source giving you good information you can act on…or are they just making you feel something (fearful, safe, angry, sad, relieved, righteous)? Answer that question and you’ll be well on your way to weeding out the pundits (like men with opinions on pregnancy, billionaires with advice on economizing, or celebrities with health and wellness brands). Remember that pundits can be anywhere: sure, they’re all over cable news and op-ed pages, but they’re also in talking-head videos on social media and on popular podcasts. Always ask yourself: is this person well-qualified to talk about this? Why or why not? Seek out experts. I love The Conversation, where experts write about science, nature, culture, foreign policy, the law, and much more.

4) Support the media coverage YOU want. Your subscriptions, your eyeballs, your ears, your clicks, your shares, your recommendations, and your donations matter. Remember that we are always collectively shaping our media landscape. We are in a troubling, fascinating, and maybe even optimistic moment when major media institutions are fracturing or bowing to fascist pressure. But journalists are endlessly inventive, and new platforms are emerging (I recommend News Not Noise, Men Yell At Me, and Erin in the Morning) where passionate, knowledgeable creators are accountable to their audience and invested in a better world.

Shape the journalism you want to see by directly supporting journalists who are doing the work. It’s not only an investment in your own education, your own mental health, and your own community. It’s an investment in our democracy.

And there it is, full circle: the opportunity to donate to BSR on this Giving Tuesday.

Whether or not you’re able to give today, we hope you find these tips useful. We’ll be in your inbox tomorrow with this week’s latest stories.