Mental Health + Self-care for Digital Journalists

Covering traumatic material, through first- or second-hand exposure as well as supporting colleagues and community, is an undeniable part of journalism but often not discussed openly. For this month’s ONA meetup, we’ll be discussing journalism, mental health and self-care for digital journalists.

We’ll change up the format a little bit from normal, still with some time for free pizza and drinks at the top. First, we’ll hear from former St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter Nancy Cambria, who reported on toxic stress and trauma for the paper (http://graphics.stltoday.com/apps/stress/), about how she managed to balance her personal well-being with reporting on a difficult subject.

Then, we'll have a roundtable discussion on the topic of mental health and self-care for digital journalists.

Do you have experiences supporting yourself or others in the newsroom through challenging times? What questions do you have about mental health, work/life balance, trauma, or self-care? We want to center this event about what you’re curious about, what you have questions about and through your own experiences with mental health and the newsroom, no matter your role. If you want a place just to discuss recent events, this can be a place for that too.

Email stlouis@journalists.org with your questions/experiences/concerns.

Additionally, here are some wonderful tips (https://dartcenter.org/content/trauma-in-newsroom-for-news-managers) from the DART Center for Journalism and Trauma on how managers can help psychological safety.

Speakers

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Nancy Cambria was the children and families reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch for more than a decade. Her stories focused on the region's most vulnerable children and families with an increasing emphasis on trauma and poverty. In the aftermath of protests and violence that erupted in Ferguson, Mo, Cambria spent seven months reporting on children and families living the area. The report, “The Crisis Within: How toxic stress and trauma endanger our children (http://graphics.stltoday.com/apps/stress/),” focused on evolving research indicating inequity, poverty and violence can deeply impair child brain and physical development and lead to poor health outcomes in adulthood. The project offered numerous solutions to solve this public health issue and was later recognized in The New York Times as one of the nation’s top pieces of solutions journalism in 2016. Cambria has won numerous state and national awards for her reporting, including a 2017 James Aronson Award for Social Justice Reporting, a 2017 Dart Award finalist, and a runner-up for the 2012 Casey Medal for Meritorious Reporting on children and family issues. She is currently the communications manager with For the Sake of All, a Washington University initiative focusing on researching and solving health inequities affecting African Americans in the St. Louis region.

Kameel Stanley produces and co-hosts We Live Here (https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.welivehere.show_&d=DwMF-g&c=UCja3IwhyjPGYeHcG7oIbg&r=lsK7cbh5RsNw2awEqlDw_WG_Frpdv1uFJbnjEusPAG8&m=1MqSh_8QWThntWq9xK_sLLJyo_WcSau_3Kup6Icvb6E&s=3UUXp88IHnH52p7r_eihdUqGJ4eGKujJVBkLFBIOLII&e=), an award-winning podcast about race and class. The show is a co-production of St. Louis Public Radio and PRX. Before jumping into podcasting, Kameel was a print reporter. She worked for several years at the Tampa Bay Times in Florida, where she investigated racial disparities in policing and city government while balancing a role as one of the newspaper’s fashion bloggers. These days, any spare time she has is spent running a storytelling organization in St. Louis. She grew up in Michigan, has a cute dog and loves yoga and spaghetti.

Veronica Erb is another human on that journey we call “adulthood.” When she’s not leading information architecture decisions and research projects for NPR (and even sometimes when she is), she’s figuring out how to take care of herself so others don’t have to. Veronica has written about how editing Wikipedia can be a kind of self-care activism, and her coworkers have recognized her community-building with the One NPR Award.