Resilient journalists need to reset, too
Covering traumatic events has ripple effects and requires steps toward self-care
Last week, four University of Idaho students were stabbed to death while they slept. On Saturday afternoon, we provided coverage of the memorial service for three football players murdered at the University of Virginia. Eight hours later, a gunman shot 22 people, killing five at an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado.
Horrific news is the expectation, not the exception.
In time, that expectation can seep into your very being, no matter who you are.
Often, as journalists, we witness trauma directly. A reporter who holds a dying man in her arms because she got to the scene before the ambulance. Another who watched medical examiners conduct 25 autopsies at the same time during the COVID-19 peak.
As a young reporter, I was sent to the scene of a toddler pulled limp out of a pool. A firefighter was in the driveway holding one tiny white “Weebok” shoe in this hands. We stood together quietly as he gently turned it over and over.
Journalists carry trauma ‘on our souls’
Even if we don’t see things firsthand, we constantly write about shootings, edit graphic images and videos, interview those left behind.
“We are engaged in constant empathetic engagement with often profoundly traumatized and vulnerable sources and communities – and we carry those on our souls,” said Bruce Shapiro, executive director of the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma, a project of Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
“We are covering events that often breach our personal sense of safety or our personal sense of what’s right in the world and may disrupt our own sense of values.”
And to compound the stress: Journalists are under attack like no other time in American journalism. They’ve spent the last three years covering a pandemic while also dealing with their own or loved ones’ illnesses. The issues they cover for the public – racism, misogyny, LQBTQ attacks – become quite personal. The industry is squeezed by economic pressures and cutbacks.
Our industry, of course, is not the only one. Health care workers, educators, first responders and many others face new pressures. Other industries have financial struggles.
We invited Shapiro to talk to our journalists last week about trauma, burnout and how to cope. His advice is helpful to anyone facing waves of stress, especially as the holidays approach.
Journalists are resilient, he said. So not all will internalize the stress the same way. “There’s a nice phrase,” he says, “‘watchful waiting.’ We presume resilience in our colleagues when they’ve covered difficult things and at the same time look out for those signature changes in workplace performance that may indicate that something’s not so great.”
Signs of burnout, cooling down
When stress or neurological arousal goes on at too high of a level, for too long, our brains become less effective, Shapiro said. We begin to make mistakes, our productivity declines, sick days go up. We may retreat from interacting with colleagues, which can be hard to see when so many of us work remotely.
There are solutions. When faced with a shock or a threat, our brains go on high alert. We need to shorten those stress responses, he said. We need neurological recovery time.
“If I’ve learned one thing in 20 plus years of work with the DART Center, it is that a resilient journalist is a well-rested journalist,” he said.
“Do we have lives outside of work? Are we engaging in restorative activity, whatever that means to us? Exercise, music, family. Are we taking meaningful time off, allowing our brains to cool down?”
Make a self-care plan
“When you’re taking care of your body, you’re actually taking care of your journalism too,” Shapiro says. His advice:
⬤ Know the signs that something is wrong. “What does a good day feel like? What does a bad day feel like? What are your warning signs that you’re headed in a not good place? Me, I lose my keys more than twice a day.”
⬤ Think about what helps you get out of a funk. Set boundaries around technology. Do an activity that involves deep rhythmic breathing. “Aerobic exercise, running, swimming, cycling, walking, but also yoga, meditation, mindfulness, all of them.”
⬤ Be careful about self-medicating with alcohol and cannabis, especially if you’re using them to sleep or get through the day. “Both interfere with the proper consolidation of difficult images and stories and experiences and the proper consolidation of stress.”
Peer support helps the most
Studies of journalists and newsrooms around the world and across cultures show the same thing.
“The single factor most associated with journalists’ resilience is strong, collegial and social support, peer support,” Shapiro said. “And the single factor most associated with PTSD, with burnout, with other kinds of psychological injury, is social isolation.”
Both trauma brain and the burnout brain thrive in isolation, he said.
Here’s his advice, great for others in stressful industries as well:
⬤ Collaborate in teams.
⬤ Work with a partner.
⬤ Plan with colleagues for the next predictable crisis, like fire or hurricane season.
⬤ Reach out and say, “Hey, can I talk to you for a sec?”
⬤ Ask how a colleague is doing. “A fragmented newsroom is an atrisk newsroom,” Shapiro said.
‘We are all one another’s role model’
It doesn’t work when managers tell people to take time off and then work themselves to burnout.
“When you take care of yourself, you’re giving permission for your colleagues to take care of themselves,” Shapiro said. “So we owe it to our colleagues, not just ourselves, to be resilient role models.
“If we are not prioritizing our selfcare, we’re actually not going to be there for our newsroom or not be there for our community when they really need us.”
So early Sunday morning, our newsroom sprinted into action on the Colorado Springs shooting. USA TODAY breaking news editor Susan Miller got the first story up. Regional editor Ray Rivera started alerting our journalists in nearby Pueblo and Fort Collins. Reporter Cady Stanton interviewed the sister of Luca Loureiro, who was hosting a monthly “Drag Divas” event at Club Q on Saturday night when the shooting occurred. Loureiro was backstage just after the show when they heard gunfire and hid with other performers. Reporter Rick Jervis interviewed a woman who talked to a friend entering the club – and is now among the dead.
They were doing what professional journalists are trained to do. Verify facts. Share stories. Allow loved ones to bear witness.
I tried to remind them what professional journalists should also be trained to do.
“Less than 24 hours ago we were covering the funerals of the murdered football players at UVA,” I wrote in our group chat. “Your professionalism and resilience is remarkable. But please keep (Shapiro’s) advice in mind as we cover this latest tragedy: take breaks, work in pairs, talk to someone about your work or how you are feeling, take a walk, exercise, spend time with your families. Be a role model of self care so others will do the same.
“We are all in this together.”