MANAGING VULNERABILITY

Abstract

The notion that journalists can develop emotional problems after being exposed to violent or traumatic events has only recently become part of the dialogue about sound newsroom management. This study, based on a national survey of 400 US news people, examines issues related to journalists' coverage of tragic events. It also explores their views about management attitudes toward news workers who are experiencing profound emotional reactions after covering violent or traumatic events. It finds that when journalists see managers as empathetic on these matters, job satisfaction and perceived morale are higher, and journalists also are more likely to remain committed to their careers.

Keywords:

• career commitment
• emotional stress
• job satisfaction
• morale
• trauma
• violence

Acknowledgements

Funding for the survey on which this study is based was provided by the Sigma Delta Chi Foundation; the Carnegie-Knight Task Force on Journalism and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation; the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma; the Indiana University School of Journalism (Bloomington, IN, USA); and the Department of Communication at the University of Washington (Seattle, WA, USA). The authors would like to acknowledge David H. Weaver and Bonnie J. Brownlee of the Indiana University School of Journalism, who participated in design of the survey.

Notes

1. Job satisfaction and morale are related but conceptually distinct terms. Job satisfaction is often defined as an affective orientation on the part of individuals toward the work roles that they occupy (Kalleberg, 1977). Morale, as used here, also is an affective orientation related to work, though it applies to the collective affective orientation of those in a workplace, such as the newsroom (Weakliem and Frenkel, 2006). In this study, journalists were asked to describe their perceptions of morale in their newsroom.

2. The Center for Survey Research at Indiana University was hired to conduct the interviewing. The center had previously conducted interviewing for the 2002 American Journalist study. That study included the probability sample of 1149 journalists and five smaller non-probability samples of minority and online journalists.

3. Fifty-four individuals who were retired, who no longer worked full time, who were no longer journalists or who had moved to another country did not meet study criteria for inclusion. Six individuals were deceased. The eligibility of another 499 who took part in the 2002 survey could not be determined, in most cases because they were no longer at their 2002 telephone number and efforts to locate them were unsuccessful. By comparison, the adjusted response rate for the 2002 study was 79 percent.

4. Respondents were asked how often they did reporting—never, seldom, occasionally or regularly.