Insiders' Stories: Coping with Newsroom Stress: An Historical Perspective

Abstract

Journalists often complain about stress, but stress in the newsroom is not new. Earlier generations of journalists also endured it and received no help for it. This study explores how early journalists coped with stress through an historical analysis of autobiographies, biographies, and magazine articles written by and about early U.S. newspaper reporters and editors. Results reveal that early journalists blamed nine factors for their stress and responded to the stress in four primary ways.