Perhaps you’ve heard: Things are a little different at DCist these days.

Rachel Sadon, the captain of this ship and the person largely responsible for charting DCist’s path at WAMU, has decamped for an interim position leading the WAMU newsroom. In her temporary absence, I’ve taken over running the site.

These are big changes, and ones that involve sacrifice from all parties involved. But they were carefully considered and, in the end, much needed.

It’s been a tough year, both in the world broadly and here at WAMU and DCist. Part of that has been the inherent difficulty of covering this year’s extraordinary, deeply unsettling, often painful news events. But another part has been trouble here at home, at the station.

Like many news organizations, WAMU is in the midst of reckoning with a toxic work culture — one that has made many people of color at the station feel alienated and undervalued, leading to a series of tremendous personnel losses for the station’s newsroom and other parts of the organization. Management has a lot of work to do to fix a deep-seated problem, and the moment calls for truly empathetic leaders with the courage and vision to make lasting change.

That’s why station leadership made the wise decision to put Rachel Sadon at the helm of the WAMU newsroom. Her thoughtful approach to leadership has been clear from the start of her role at DCist, and it’s badly needed elsewhere now.

Here at DCist, my plan is pretty simple: Continue covering the news — the pandemic that has upended our world, the transformative and ongoing protest movement, and the everyday events that shape our communities — with an eye toward making our coverage even sharper, fuller, more representative of the region, and more empathetic. I also hope to preserve a team culture that feels genuinely collaborative and inclusive for the journalists and other staffers working here.

As ever, we want to hear from you, too: Are there things DCist should be doing better? Areas of coverage you want to read more about? Compliments you want to bestow? I want to hear all of them. Send me an email at natalie@dcist.com.

The change happening at WAMU, like many necessary changes, feels uncomfortable. But the moment calls for welcoming that discomfort and pushing through to see what good things might be waiting on the other side.