I just drove 10,000 miles and visited dozens of newsrooms to chronicle journalism in America. Here’s what I learned.

One year ago this week — Sunshine Week — I set out to chronicle journalism in America in 2017 by driving 10,000 miles. As a former full-time journalist turned journalism professor I wanted to step out of my own newsroom experiences and learn. I was interested in holding a mirror up to the journalists who bring us the news every day. “Who,” I asked, “is watching the gatekeepers?” I visited news outlets big and small, for-profit and non-profit, traditional and cutting-edge across all media.

During this project, most days I would drive nine to 13 hours (my Apple watch thought I was dead), conduct interviews, shoot and record photos and video. Then late at night in hotels I would edit video and photos (to use in my journalism classes) and blog about my experiences. I now have hundreds of videos and photos as well as a library of interviews with journalists.

I could not have picked a better time to document journalists bearing witness to history. The month I left for the first leg of my trip March Madness tipped off, Chuck Berry died, Neil Gorsuch’s Supreme Court confirmation hearing began, a federal judge blocked a revised travel ban, Attorney General Jeff Sessions dismissed Obama-era prosecutors, and former President Obama was…