Morning. In focus today, we’re going behind the scenes on the challenges of covering the twists and turns that define U.S. President Donald Trump’s leadership.

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On June 16, 2015, Donald Trump announced his presidential campaign after descending a golden escalator into the atrium of Trump Tower in Manhattan. Since that day, newsrooms around the world have been engaging in variations of the same debate:

Is he serious?

That is the overarching question sitting above a few more puzzles that drive our daily coverage.

• The deluge dilemma: Trump often makes multiple rapid-fire threats. How do we distinguish between real policy shifts and random musings? Do we risk devaluing news, even when it’s important, by adding more headlines into the marketplace?
• Finding a balance: Covering this administration requires a massive amount of editorial attention. What domestic Canadian stories are losing coverage because we’re focusing on Washington? Can we afford not to cover these issues with all our editorial might?
• The uncertainty paradox: How do we report on highly disruptive economic threats without contributing to panic?

The constant debate over those questions shapes decisions about what needs attention, how prominently to treat something and when restraint is better than another urgent headline.

Providing context has always been an important part of what we do, but it has proven vital in covering an unpredictable president. By looking at Trump’s past, we can triangulate where his threats might meet reality, when they won’t, and when we simply don’t know.

For example, when he was threatening to invade Greenland in January, it was helpful to look at what happened after Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs last April. In the days following his announcement of sweeping global tariffs, investors dumped U.S. government bonds, which had the effect of lifting borrowing costs throughout the economy.

After his address to world leaders in Davos, in which he threatened major tariffs against NATO allies and mused about annexing the Danish territory, the resulting “Sell America” rout quickly became difficult for the White House to ignore, and Trump again backed down.

In a nutshell

That’s why you’ll see that kind of context in our coverage. Often, stories will include an early paragraph that captures the “so what” of it all, zooming out to give readers the big picture, and outlining why the story matters.

Journalists call this a “nutgraf” – a blend of “in a nutshell” and “paragraph” that became popularized in the seventies. (Why “graf” instead of “graph”? I honestly don’t know. It saves us from typing one extra letter. One small way we contribute to solving Canada’s productivity crisis.)

Nutgrafs are also helpful for busy readers who want to get as much info as they can on the ride up the elevator, or in those precious minutes before the kids wake up.

There are all sorts of other considerations around our coverage. Even though Trump’s threats follow familiar patterns, they inevitably raise new questions. And our curiosity is often piqued by what Canadians are searching for and asking about on social media, in emails and in the comments section.

Today, across a range of stories, Globe journalists are examining the high-level diplomatic efforts by Prime Minister Mark Carney, which manufacturers would be most affected by the new tariffs, why provincial alcohol bans are back on the table, and how all of this is likely to unfold over the 29 days before the tariffs are meant to take effect.

And if you’re just not in the mood, that’s entirely understandable. Many of us are coming off a tough run: the Great Recession, a pandemic that shut down the world and a rupture of relations with our closest trading partner. And have you been to a grocery store lately?

That’s also why our broader coverage also includes stories that prove life goes on outside of the battle, and that even in our toughest moments, Canadians continue to build, sing, chase their passions and carry on.

Tomorrow, we’ll do it all over again.