Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma

Mata’afa Kene Lesa woke up in heaven Sept. 19 and found himself in hell. When a tsunami struck Upolu, one of Western Samoa’s two main islands, Lesa – the editor of Samoa Observer – was one of the first local journalists to respond, racing to the affected area to be met by scenes of death and devastation. More »

What has become known as the "Black Saturday Bushfires" is Australia’s worse natural disaster to date. On Feb. 7, 2009, temperatures of 46 degrees Celsius and winds of 100 km per hour created explosive firestorms with 1500 times the energy of the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima. More »

"It just doesn't go out of the brain." Onscreen, an Australian Broadcasting Corporation editor described watching footage of a beheading in Iraq. At a brown bag lunch at the Columbia Journalism School on Oct. 30, students watched a DVD chronicling journalists' experiences covering traumatic stories, from accidents to terrorism, and then discussed how to manage such occupational stress with two of Australia's leading experts on the subject. More »

The last weeks have seen a number of journalists who have participated in Dart Center programs winning awards for their reporting and publishing stories on issues of trauma and journalism. If there are any we missed, please add them in the comments. More »

A string of seismic events has made for a week of deadly disasters in the Asia-Pacific region. On Sept. 26, Typhoon Ketsana hit the Phillipines, leaving hundreds dead and flooding 80 percent of Manila. On Sept. 29, an earthquake and ensuing tsunamis rocked the Samoas, killing at least 150. The Indonesian island of Sumatra was hit by an earthquake the next day, and then by a second less-severe earthquake the day after. More »

On the morning of Friday, July 17, at least eight people were killed and fifty injured in near-simultaneous bombings of two luxury hotels in Jakarta, Indonesia. It was the first major terrorist attack to take place on Indonesian soil in several years.

To help journalists covering this story, in Indonesia and around the world, the Dart Center is aggregating useful resources. If you have an addition, please add it in the comments. More »

This weekend, New Zealand's Sunday Star Times carried a thoughtful article by Tim Hume on trauma as an under-discussed occupational hazard in journalism. The story's protagonist is Jim MacMillan, a Philadelphia photojournalist who found himself "virtually disabled" by what he calls his "psychological Waterloo": the World Trade Center on September 11th, 2001. More »

Yesteday's issue of The Australian carries the headline: "Crash Course in Dealing with Trauma." It's the story of journalist Mike Walter, an accidental firsthand witness to the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon. More »

The newly formed Emergency Media and Public Affairs group in Australia held its annual conference in Melbourne, Australia May 24-26. Network Nine news reporter Brett McLeod, who produced Dart Centre Australasia’s "News Media and Trauma" DVD, and Ochberg Fellow Gary Tippet both represented the Dart Centre at different presentations at the two-day conference. More »

A code to protect the safety of media professionals was launched yesterday at the "Reporting Wars: Challenges and Responsibilities" conference in Sydney, Australia. More »