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.
Megan H. Chan Cultural reporting goes mainstream
Nicholas Quah Podcasting’s coming class war
Ståle Grut The battle for high-quality VR
Adam Thomas The coming collaboration across Europe
Bill Keller A healthy skepticism about data
Mathew Ingram The Faustian Facebook dance continues
Keren Goldshlager Defining a focus, and then saying no
Juliette De Maeyer and Dominique Trudel A rebirth of populist journalism
Anita Zielina The sales funnel reaches (and changes) the newsroom
Andrew Ramsammy Rise of the rebel journalist
Gabriel Snyder The aberration of 20th-century journalism
Moreno Cruz Osório The year of transparency in Brazilian journalism
Tim Herrera The safe space of service journalism
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen News after advertising may look like news before advertising
Liz McMillen The year of deep insights
Mira Lowe News literacy, bias, and “Hamilton”
Melody Kramer Radically rethinking design
Rachel Sklar Women are going to get loud
Dan Colarusso Let’s make live video we can love
Matt Karolian AI improves publishing
Rachel Schallom Stop flying over the flyover states
Mike Ragsdale A smarter information diet
Errin Haines Chaos or community?
Priya Ganapati Mobile websites are ready for reinvention
Annemarie Dooling UGC as a path out of the bubble
Guy Raz Inspiration and hope will matter more than ever
S.P. Sullivan Baking transparency into our routines
Ken Schwencke Disaggregation and collection
Michael Kuntz Trust is the new click
Emily Goligoski Incorporating audience feedback at scale
Ryan McCarthy Platforms grow up or grow more toxic
Asma Khalid The year of the newsy podcast
Julia Beizer Building a coherent core identity
P. Kim Bui The year journalism teaches again
Tracie Powell Building reader relationships
Andrew Haeg The year of listening
Jon Slade Trusted news, at a premium
Laura Walker Authentic voices, not fake news
Ray Soto VR moves from experiments to immersion
Taylor Lorenz “Selfie journalism” becomes a thing
Aja Bogdanoff Comments start pulling their weight
Zizi Papacharissi Distracted journalism looks in the mirror
Jonathan Hunt Measurement companies get with the times
Scott Dodd Nonprofits team up for impact
Liz Danzico The triumph of the small
Hillary Frey Forests need to burn to regrow
Vivian Schiller Tested like never before
Elizabeth Jensen Trust depends on the details
Amy Webb Journalism as a service
Peter Sterne A dangerous anti-press mix
Dannagal G. Young The return of the gatekeepers
Rebekah Monson Journalism is community-as-a-service
Tanya Cordrey The resurgence of reach
M. Scott Havens Quality advertising to pair with quality content
Reyhan Harmanci Bear witness — but then what?
Michael Oreskes Reversing the erosion of democracy
Sydette Harry Facing journalism’s history
Erin Millar The bottom falls out of Canadian media
Millie Tran International expansion without colonial overtones
Jeremy Barr A terrible year for Tiers B through D
Nathalie Malinarich Making it easy
Burt Herman Local news gets interesting
Maria Bustillos “It’s true — I saw it on Facebook”
Dan Gillmor Fix the demand side of news too
Alberto Cairo Communicating uncertainty to our readers
Lam Thuy Vo The primary source in the age of mechanical multiplication
Olivia Ma The year collaboration beats competition
Steve Henn The next revolution is voice
Andy Rossback The year of the user
Mario García Virtual reality on mobile leaps forward
David Chavern Fake news gets solved
Lee Glendinning A call for great editing
Sarah Wolozin Virtual reality on the open web
Andrew Losowsky Building our own communities
AX Mina 2017 is for the attention innovators
Francesco Marconi The year of augmented writing
Amie Ferris-Rotman Вслед за Россией
Amy O'Leary Not just covering communities, reaching them
Swati Sharma Failing diversity is failing journalism
Carla Zanoni Prioritizing emotional health
Dhiya Kuriakose The year of digital detoxing
David Skok What lies beyond paywalls
Alice Antheaume A new test for French media
Ariane Bernard Better data about your users
Mandy Velez The audience is the source and the story
Caitlin Thompson High touch, high value
Tressie McMillan Cottom A path through the media’s coming legitimacy crisis
David Weigel A test for online speech
Sarah Marshall Focusing on the why of the click
Mary Meehan Feeling blue in a red state
Umbreen Bhatti A sense of journalists’ humanity
Corey Ford The year of the rebelpreneur
Margarita Noriega From pinning tweets to tweeting pins
Alexis Lloyd Public trust for private realities
Nushin Rashidian A rise in high-price, high-value subscriptions
Sam Ford The year we talk about our awful metrics
Samantha Barry Messaging apps go mainstream
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Earn trust by working for (and with) readers
Cindy Royal Preparing the digital educator-scholar hybrid
Jim Friedlich A banner year for venture philanthropy
Sue Schardt Objectivity, fairness, balance, and love
Erin Pettigrew A year of reflection in tech
Jonathan Stray A boom in responsible conservative media
Helen Havlak Chasing mobile search results
Kawandeep Virdee Moving deeper than the machine of clicks
Valérie Bélair-Gagnon Truthiness in private spaces
Ole Reißmann Un-faking the news
Geetika Rudra Journalism is community
Claire Wardle Verification takes center stage
Emi Kolawole From empathy to community
Pablo Boczkowski Fake news and the future of journalism
Carrie Brown-Smith We won’t do enough
Cory Haik Navigating power in Trump’s America
Sara M. Watson There is no neutral interface
Joanne Lipman The year of the drone, really
Renée Kaplan Pure reach has reached its limit
Andrea Silenzi Podcasts dive into breaking news analysis
Doris Truong Connecting with diverse perspectives
Richard Tofel The country doesn’t trust us — but they do believe us
Christopher Meighan Unlocking a deeper mobile experience
Kathleen Kingsbury Print as a premium offering
Eric Nuzum Podcasting stratifies into hard layers
Robert Hernandez History will exclude you, again
Katie Zhu The year of minority media
Molly de Aguiar Philanthropists galvanize around news
Javaun Moradi What can we own?
Rubina Madan Fillion Snapchat grows up
Matt Waite The people running the media are the problem
Ashley C. Woods Local journalism will fight a new fight
Tim Griggs The year we stop taking sides
Libby Bawcombe Kids board the podcast train
Mary Walter-Brown Getting comfortable asking for money
Juan Luis Sánchez Your predictions are our present