One presumes that a news organization would have a style guide for a reason. GLAAD summarizes the AP and New York Times style books here.
And right there it says...
Use the pronoun preferred by the individuals who have acquired the physical characteristics of the opposite sex or present themselves in a way that does not correspond with their sex at birth. If that preference is not expressed, use the pronoun consistent with the way the individuals live publicly.
And that really makes people scratch their heads when they released
Trans woman Bruce Jenner debuts Caitlyn in Vanity Fair
Bruce Jenner made his debut as a transgender woman in a va-va-voom fashion in the July issue of Vanity Fair.
“Call me Caitlyn,” declares a headline on the July cover of Vanity Fair, with a photo of a long-haired Jenner in a strapless corset, legs crossed, sitting on a stool. The image was shot by famed celeb photographer Annie Leibovitz.
In addition to the corset, Vanity Fair released a black-and-white video on the making of the cover. It shows Jenner getting her hair done and posing in a long, off-the-shoulder gown with ample cleavage.
AP buried the important bit in the fourth paragraph:
If I was lying on my deathbed and I had kept this secret and never ever did anything about it, I would be lying there saying, ‘You just blew your entire life.’
The AP also referred to Jenner as a male in a tweet about its story. It deleted the tweet after being criticized for misgendering Jenner.
Beyond misgendering Jenner, the AP's fixation on her "cleavage" and "va-va-voom" fashion reinforces a widespread problem with media coverage of transgender people: a voyeuristic fixation on their bodies and appearances. That kind of coverage is degrading and objectifying and treats transgender people as either spectacles or sexualized objects. It adds nothing of substance to news reports while reinforcing the idea that how transgender people look is an acceptable topic for public comment.
--Media Matters
As Monica Weymouth of phillymag.com pointed out:
Internet Meets Caitlyn Jenner, Immediately Sexualizes Her
After less than a day of revealing her new identity, Caitlyn Jenner had already been objectified and sexualized for our entertainment.
Which makes sense. She is, after all, a woman.
To be fair, it’s not that Bruce Jenner was always wearing a suit and tie on magazine covers. He was shirtless and wrapped around a blonde on the May 1982 edition of Playgirl. But, well, that was Playgirl. This is the Annie Leibovitz-shot cover of Vanity Fair, which inside has a story from Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter (and Philly native) Buzz Bissinger. We have to assume this is journalism, and we have to wonder why a photo of Caitlyn in lingerie was selected as the cover image.
It’s possible, of course, that Caitlyn chose the image. But my money is on whoever is counting the 6 million unique visitors who broke VanityFair.com’s traffic record, some of whom shelled out $4.99 to read the entire article before it hits newsstands on June 9th. And who could blame them, after Vanity Fair teases intimate details in the preview, such as “Bissinger reveals that Jenner has not had genital surgery”?
--Weymouth
And then, of course, there were the social media reactions. It was hard to tell yesterday, but Caitlyn Jenner isn’t an object, and she isn’t your new shopping buddy. She’s a human being, an Olympic gold medalist, a successful media personality and a parent. Even when applying a bell curve to weed out your Midwest cousins and Jezebel die-hards, things looked a little bleak. Below is a recap of some of yesterday's greatest hits, in case you were smart enough to stop paying attention:
“I’d hit that.”
Pretty sure you weren’t invited to. Which is confusing, I know, as you assume that every single female body exists for your approval and viewing pleasure.
“She’s hotter than her ex-wife/daughters.”
How lovely of you to take this opportunity to judge all of these women you’ve never met based on how much they turn you on. I’m sure your ranking is important to them.
“I’d like to see the untouched pics.”
Ah yes, because she didn’t already give enough of herself here.
“Does it make me gay if …”
No. Being gay makes you gay. But saying this does make you stupid.
--Weymouth
It's wonderful Caitlyn Jenner is able to be herself and show the world the woman she has always known herself to be. But it's also important to know that this magazine cover is not the moment she became a woman. She was always one; it's just she was the only person who knew that.
--Nick Adams,GLAAD
One woman picturing another (also "of a certain age") as a standard sex symbol does nicely smudge conventional strictures around bodily shame. And what happens to established theories of the male gaze when a transgender woman is photographed by an artist who may have been shy to identify as a lesbian, while happy to celebrate being the lover of the late Susan Sontag, the cultural critic whose book "On Photography" is standard reading?
--Christopher Knight, LATimes
Salon's Joanna Rothkopf dug into another facet of the story:
Conservative Twitter reacts to #CallMeCaitlyn as horribly as you’d expect
When Vanity Fair released photos from the Annie Leibovitz-Caitlyn Jenner photo shoot, marking Jenner’s first major public appearance after her transition, Twitter took a break from being snark garbage dump and became a receptacle for an outpouring of really lovely messages of support.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if that sentence was the whole article?
Unfortunately, there are people who use public moments of bravery as opportunities to further their own agendas. Here are a few examples of the cowardice that lurked beneath today’s celebration:
@jimgeraghty
Now can we ask Hillary how many genders there are?
@Neal_Dewing
You probably agree that transgenderism is a mental illness, but you're too cowed by the potential disapproval of your peers to say so.
@benshapiro
If you are cheering rather than praying for a man who has mutilated himself due to mental illness, you are part of the problem.
--Rothkopf
Then there is This piece on Jenner's economic privilege by Meredith Talusan at the Guardian:
Do you applaud Caitlyn Jenner because she is brave, or because she's pretty?
When I heard that Caitlyn Jenner debuted her new name, her upcoming Vanity Fair cover and a new Twitter account, I went online to welcome her. Then I noticed a trend on my Twitter feed: people – including feminists, people of color, queers and transgender folk – commenting on how beautiful she looks. While I welcome all the positive affirmation of Caitlyn Jenner’s gender identity, it’s important to not forget how the forces of economic privilege and beauty standards affect most trans women. And, though all women are subject to conventional beauty standards, the ability and even necessity to adhere to them is rife with even more tension for trans women.
Jenner’s womanhood and the beauty for which she went through many trials to gain certainly shape the person that she is, but it’s vital to ask ourselves whether our acceptance and celebration of her humanity is partially predicated on that beauty. If we accept her in part because she fits into our understanding of the gender binary, then we’re celebrating not just her transition but her economic privilege and her allegiance to a beauty standard that, for non-trans, cisgender women, may mean being more desired or liked, but for trans women is often an insurmountable barrier to being considered women at all.
Especially when so many trans women’s appearances are disparaged – Jenner has hardly been spared these insults – there’s a certain positive aspect to seeing the beauty of another trans woman celebrated. But, at the same time, the financial resources and medical procedures that enabled Jenner’s beauty are inaccessible to the vast majority of trans women, who remain one of the poorest demographic groups in the country even as so many of us are in need of expensive medical services to feel comfortable in our bodies.
--Talusan
Drian Juarez has another view: