Losing a job can feel like the ground is crumbling beneath your feet. When Lewis Wallace got fired, though, it sent shockwaves through the entire media landscape.

Four years ago, Wallace launched his career in broadcasting after winning a fellowship designed to increase diversity in public media. When he was hired by American Public Media's Marketplace program, he was one of the first out transgender reporters on a national radio show. His employers encouraged Wallace to build his brand through his personal blog.

That is, until Wallace questioned the idea of journalistic neutrality.

"Neutrality isn’t real," he wrote in a January post on Medium, "Objectivity is dead, and I'm ok with it."

Neutrality is impossible for me, and you should admit that it is for you, too. As a member of a marginalized community (I am transgender), I’ve never had the opportunity to pretend I can be "neutral."

After years of silence/denial about our existence, the media has finally picked up trans stories. But the nature of the debate is over whether or not we should be allowed to live and participate in society, use public facilities and expect not to be harassed, fired or even killed. Obviously, I can’t be neutral or centrist in a debate over my own humanity.

Just a few hours after the piece was posted, Wallace was suspended.

His managing editor claimed the essay violated Marketplace's code of ethics, specifically a passage in which Wallace wrote, "We will be called politically correct, liberal and leftist. We shouldn’t care about that nor work to avoid it. We don’t have time for that."

He was asked to take the post down, which he did initially. But two days later, he decided to republish it, explaining to his boss in an email that, "I cannot maintain my own integrity, both in my identity and in my personal views, and comply with your request to keep the post down."

The following Monday—ten days after Donald Trump's inauguration—Wallace was fired from APM. He was shocked and heartbroken over losing a job he loved, but was also determined to stand by what he'd written.

Wallace tells NewNowNext he doesn't believe anyone is really objective, but it's easier to maintain the facade when your identity isn't under attack: "If you're already perceived by others as neutral, it's easier to claim neutrality. I never walk into a room where people don't automatically place a fair amount of of politicization on me, because I look like a trans person."

Accurately reporting on an administration that frames opinions as facts, he says, requires taking a stance.

"If someone believes that trans women are sexual predators trying to use public restrooms, that's not an opinion, it's a falsehood. It's a lie perpetrated against our community. That's the way it should be reported, no two ways about it."

He also believes being a minority journalist can be an advantage in the current political climate.

"People who are trans are accustomed to being in spaces where we are outsiders. We have to navigate how much do we push back on things, what do we fight over, how do we fight. Anyone with a marginalized identity is used to that."

One of the points Wallace was making in his piece is that he's used to putting his foot down at a certain point, "so I know how and when it's called for."

Now that the president has dubbed journalists enemies of the American people, that's a valuable skill set. It's also part of why Wallace takes offense at the idea that acknowledging his position means he secretly wants to do advocacy journalism.

"I've never had a choice between being myself or being an advocate for myself," he says. "I think that line is a little bit false for people like me. We certainly don't all need to be Mother Jones, but I do think mainstream news organizations could do a better job at covering and being relevant to marginalized communities."

A more diverse newsroom could also be an antidote to the "fake news" problem: Many people are turning to alternative outlets because they feel ignored by mainstream media. If we'd done a better job of reaching them in the run up to the election, he maintains, we might not have Donald Trump in the White House.

"It's still largely unexplored what a really diverse mainstream newsroom would look like," Wallace says, adding that minorities can't just be tokens on the masthead. Their unique insights must be highlighted, rather than silenced in the name of imaginary objectivity.

Having people of color in the room is essential, for example, when deciding how to cover racism and white supremacy.

"There's not only one way to approach that coverage," he explains. "A lot of editorial decisions are made by of groups of mostly white people, and it seems inevitable that those groups would be misinformed about how to best go about covering those topics."

Although he may have been the first to be fired for saying so, Wallace is hardly alone in asserting newsrooms can have either diversity or impartiality, but not both. People of color have been saying this for a long time. Now, our current political climate is prompting others to join the conversation.

"These issues are largely theoretical for straight white cis men like myself," Felix Salmon wrote in Fusion in response to Wallace's firing. "For us, being self-effacing is a little bit of a humblebrag: we get to bask in our privilege without calling any particular attention to it. For our colleagues who are female, of color, and LGBTQ, however, the calculus is very different... Impartiality, for anybody but a white man, is literally self-defeating."

Being fired certainly hasn't been fun for Wallace, but there has been a silver lining: He's gotten numerous work offers and has helped nurture a critical conversation. Journalists all over the world have reached out to thank him for bringing the issue to the forefront.

"I've heard that people have been bringing my original blog post to their bosses and editors to say, 'we want to talk about these issues,' he says. "Those conversations have already been happening, but this event kind of broke it open for some people."

You can follow Lewis Wallace on Twitter at @LewisPants