Hi, Reader,

Last Friday I joined a panel at the Mental Health in Journalism Summit, organized by The Self-Investigation. The event ran for four days and brought together journalists, academics, and educators from around the world. Read more below!
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Is modern journalism in a crisis? It's a question from a different panel at a different conference, but I enjoyed watching it, especially now. And I think you should too:

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Sanne

Mental health is a leadership problem

The Mental Health in Journalism Summit panel was titled Building the Safety Net: Three Approaches to Care in Journalism.
I shared the speaker position with Carl Hartley, who teaches journalism at the University of Leeds, and Sam Moseti Nyamwange, who works on mental health in journalism across Africa for RNW. Kim Brice moderated us. Our contexts were all very different, yet the challenges turned out to be similar. I sum it up in five points:

1. Mental health still gets "joked off" or ridiculed​
   Carl admitted that early in his career, he would laugh the topic away. In many media contexts, the topic still is ridiculed. Carl started taking it seriously when he began teaching students and realized they were entering the profession completely unprepared for well-being. Sam's commitment comes from the research he did in Africa, where tragic situations like young journalists' suicides also showed up. For me, the startup world in Asia opened up opportunities for workshops because these entrepreneurs were close to burnout.
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2. Financial insecurity is a mental health issue
   ​All of us on the panel agreed on this, and research also shows. Short contracts, layoffs, low freelance rates, and not knowing where next month's income will come from take a constant toll. No breathing exercise or yoga practice solves an unpaid invoice. An honest conversation about well-being needs to include money.
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3. Uncertainty and transformation ​
   Unpredictability kept coming up throughout the session. The rapid changes in the industry will not settle down anytime soon. The useful skill is learning how to work with uncertainty by setting clear boundaries and protecting your rest.
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4. The negativity of stories also weighs on journalists ​
   Journalists process distressing material continuously, and it's one reason I keep returning to solutions journalism. It doesn't make hard stories easy, but reporting on how people respond to problems changes how journalists deal with their work.
   Sam added that Western journalism ethics don't always translate to other cultures either. The same is true of well-being. What we in the West view as the right care can be different in other places. It deserves the same reflection as we bring to our reporting.
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5. In the end, it's leadership ​
   This is the conclusion of the panel. Individual resilience is important, but it can't compensate for an organizational culture that is extractive. Leaders set the pace, and also decide whether to see well-being as a personal failure or a systemic problem.

Breathing exercises

I closed the session with a short breathing exercise, and you can try it at your desk: sit comfortably, close your eyes, move your attention inward, and observe the breath. Just observe how the air is going in and coming out of your nostrils; don't try to change anything. Set a timer for five minutes or more.

If you want more of this: The Human Pace is my self-paced course for professional storytellers on working sustainably. Seven modules and a workbook you can go through in your own time. Until Friday 16 October, you can get 25% off with code SUMMIT.

There are also two other ways in:

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  ​A quick re-introduction
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Join us on Friday

The Human Beat online sessions are free to join every month. The next one is on Friday 16 October, 5 PM SGT, 11 AM CET. It's a space to talk about the human side of this work with peers. Register here.

See you next week!

Sanne

P.S.: The Inclusive Journalism Weekly is free and reader-supported. If it's useful to you, you can support it on Patreon.