Prioritizing emotional health in the newsroom will move from a nice-to-have practice to a must-have mindset.
Even before the politically charged climate hit its zenith on Nov. 9, editors were quietly speaking to each other about the sense of trauma and stress that came as a result of the increasing availability of footage of dead bodies, violence, and pandemonium from Aleppo, Paris, Nice, Orlando, and more. While foreign correspondents and crime reporters have always faced the brutality of conflict, the non-stop availability of images and news reports has saturated newsrooms to a point where trauma management has crept into once-isolated workplaces.
At a recent discussion on burnout during Newsgeist, journalists from around the country brainstormed ways to combat feelings of exhaustion, stress, and an inability to really disconnect from the news cycle and their work.
Some, including me, have already removed several social media apps from our personal phones in order to properly delineate between work and time off. And while everyone at the Newsgeist session agreed our use of our mobile devices was a contributing factor to our malaise, we admitted we were worried we’d be missing out — professionally and personally — if we hit delete.
It’s time to support each other in entering the withdrawal process.
Some ideas tossed around included building stronger communities in the newsroom, ones in which we can express feelings rather than suppressing them in an attempt to look unfazed and objective; managers making sure people are actually off when they take time off — no Slack or emails, group outings that are built around more than alcohol consumption. In short, finding ways to bring a new sense of humanity in the newsroom.
This comes at time in our newsrooms as many of us are working on ways to make our journalism experience increasingly sticky or “addictive.” As we meet mobile readers in their pockets, in their cars, or on audio devices at all times of the day, we might also ask ourselves how we are contributing to the health of the individuals for whom we produce journalism everyday. If we do not start by asking ourselves that same question and monitor our digital health, we will never be able to do that for our audience.
Carla Zanoni is executive emerging media editor at The Wall Street Journal.
Umbreen Bhatti A sense of journalists’ humanity
Caitlin Thompson High touch, high value
Taylor Lorenz “Selfie journalism” becomes a thing
Corey Ford The year of the rebelpreneur
Mathew Ingram The Faustian Facebook dance continues
Tracie Powell Building reader relationships
Carrie Brown-Smith We won’t do enough
Alexis Lloyd Public trust for private realities
Michael Oreskes Reversing the erosion of democracy
Elizabeth Jensen Trust depends on the details
Jon Slade Trusted news, at a premium
Amy Webb Journalism as a service
Andrew Ramsammy Rise of the rebel journalist
David Weigel A test for online speech
Dan Colarusso Let’s make live video we can love
P. Kim Bui The year journalism teaches again
Katie Zhu The year of minority media
Eric Nuzum Podcasting stratifies into hard layers
Asma Khalid The year of the newsy podcast
Tim Herrera The safe space of service journalism
Tressie McMillan Cottom A path through the media’s coming legitimacy crisis
Doris Truong Connecting with diverse perspectives
Mary Walter-Brown Getting comfortable asking for money
Dhiya Kuriakose The year of digital detoxing
Matt Karolian AI improves publishing
Moreno Cruz Osório The year of transparency in Brazilian journalism
Pablo Boczkowski Fake news and the future of journalism
Andy Rossback The year of the user
Jonathan Hunt Measurement companies get with the times
Molly de Aguiar Philanthropists galvanize around news
Joanne Lipman The year of the drone, really
Ariane Bernard Better data about your users
Valérie Bélair-Gagnon Truthiness in private spaces
Steve Henn The next revolution is voice
Swati Sharma Failing diversity is failing journalism
Christopher Meighan Unlocking a deeper mobile experience
Ashley C. Woods Local journalism will fight a new fight
Nathalie Malinarich Making it easy
Reyhan Harmanci Bear witness — but then what?
Gabriel Snyder The aberration of 20th-century journalism
Julia Beizer Building a coherent core identity
Emily Goligoski Incorporating audience feedback at scale
Geetika Rudra Journalism is community
Ståle Grut The battle for high-quality VR
Samantha Barry Messaging apps go mainstream
Anita Zielina The sales funnel reaches (and changes) the newsroom
Richard Tofel The country doesn’t trust us — but they do believe us
Robert Hernandez History will exclude you, again
Carla Zanoni Prioritizing emotional health
Javaun Moradi What can we own?
Errin Haines Chaos or community?
Zizi Papacharissi Distracted journalism looks in the mirror
Tanya Cordrey The resurgence of reach
Millie Tran International expansion without colonial overtones
Margarita Noriega From pinning tweets to tweeting pins
Melody Kramer Radically rethinking design
Emi Kolawole From empathy to community
Libby Bawcombe Kids board the podcast train
Bill Adair The year of the fact-checking bot
Andrew Losowsky Building our own communities
Erin Pettigrew A year of reflection in tech
M. Scott Havens Quality advertising to pair with quality content
Dan Gillmor Fix the demand side of news too
Aja Bogdanoff Comments start pulling their weight
Alice Antheaume A new test for French media
Guy Raz Inspiration and hope will matter more than ever
Cory Haik Navigating power in Trump’s America
Rubina Madan Fillion Snapchat grows up
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen News after advertising may look like news before advertising
Cindy Royal Preparing the digital educator-scholar hybrid
Vivian Schiller Tested like never before
David Skok What lies beyond paywalls
Erin Millar The bottom falls out of Canadian media
Sarah Wolozin Virtual reality on the open web
Ryan McCarthy Platforms grow up or grow more toxic
Lam Thuy Vo The primary source in the age of mechanical multiplication
Mike Ragsdale A smarter information diet
Almar Latour Thanks, #fakenews
Nushin Rashidian A rise in high-price, high-value subscriptions
S.P. Sullivan Baking transparency into our routines
Jim Friedlich A banner year for venture philanthropy
Nicholas Quah Podcasting’s coming class war
Hillary Frey Forests need to burn to regrow
Sara M. Watson There is no neutral interface
Bill Keller A healthy skepticism about data
Kawandeep Virdee Moving deeper than the machine of clicks
Burt Herman Local news gets interesting
Priya Ganapati Mobile websites are ready for reinvention
Lee Glendinning A call for great editing
Liz Danzico The triumph of the small
Megan H. Chan Cultural reporting goes mainstream
Matt Waite The people running the media are the problem
Amie Ferris-Rotman Вслед за Россией
Juan Luis Sánchez Your predictions are our present
Sam Ford The year we talk about our awful metrics
Francesco Marconi The year of augmented writing
Kathleen Kingsbury Print as a premium offering
Ken Schwencke Disaggregation and collection
Juliette De Maeyer and Dominique Trudel A rebirth of populist journalism
Sue Schardt Objectivity, fairness, balance, and love
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Earn trust by working for (and with) readers
Rachel Schallom Stop flying over the flyover states
Amy O'Leary Not just covering communities, reaching them
AX Mina 2017 is for the attention innovators
Adam Thomas The coming collaboration across Europe
Mario García Virtual reality on mobile leaps forward
David Chavern Fake news gets solved
Keren Goldshlager Defining a focus, and then saying no
Ray Soto VR moves from experiments to immersion
Mandy Velez The audience is the source and the story
Andrew Haeg The year of listening
Tim Griggs The year we stop taking sides
Michael Kuntz Trust is the new click
Annemarie Dooling UGC as a path out of the bubble
Maria Bustillos “It’s true — I saw it on Facebook”
Mary Meehan Feeling blue in a red state
Scott Dodd Nonprofits team up for impact
Jonathan Stray A boom in responsible conservative media
Mira Lowe News literacy, bias, and “Hamilton”
Rebekah Monson Journalism is community-as-a-service
Liz McMillen The year of deep insights
Dannagal G. Young The return of the gatekeepers
Alberto Cairo Communicating uncertainty to our readers
Andrea Silenzi Podcasts dive into breaking news analysis
Jeremy Barr A terrible year for Tiers B through D
Olivia Ma The year collaboration beats competition
Helen Havlak Chasing mobile search results
Ole Reißmann Un-faking the news
Sarah Marshall Focusing on the why of the click
Renée Kaplan Pure reach has reached its limit
Peter Sterne A dangerous anti-press mix