Skip to main content

Education & Outreach

The Trust for Trauma Journalism prepares news professionals for the physical and emotional impact of covering traumatic events.

While journalism organizations operate and fund specific projects, the Trust serves as an umbrella foundation, designed to address or resource multiple areas of trauma journalism awareness, education and training. The Trust advocates for global journalism organizations by networking and collaborating with global journalists working in areas of conflict and supporting their requests for resources, providing financial support, expanding their organizational networks, and encouraging new ideas to improve trauma-informed journalism.

The Trust provides programs and resources for individuals and organizations:

Trauma Journalism Symposiums

The Trust for Trauma Journalism supports journalism schools and media organizations by providing collaborative educational programs and symposiums to present best practices in trauma-informed reporting. The symposiums provide opportunities for journalists, journalism students, mental health providers, and government and emergency services experts to discuss the effects of trauma on individuals and communities.

Trauma Journalist Scholarship Programs

The Trust for Trauma Journalism’s Ochberg/McLellan Scholarship is offered to support professional trauma journalists and media professionals or journalism students with specialized training and/or higher education opportunities to prepare them for the physical and emotional impacts of covering traumatic events.

Details can be found on our Scholarships page.

Trauma Program Grant Opportunities

The Trust for Trauma Journalism’s “Trauma Journalism Grant” aims to support trauma-informed journalism research and practices, advance innovative, exemplary reporting on violence, conflict, tragedy, and their aftermath, and sustain global initiatives that prepare news professionals for the impact of covering traumatic events.

Partner Organizations

The Trust works with the following established Trauma Journalism Organizations:

  • The Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma is at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. The Center encourages ethical and sensitive reporting on violence, conflict, and tragedy worldwide.
  • Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard
  • The Center of Innovation: Media, Conflict, and Peacebuilding at the U.S. Institute of Peace focuses on harnessing the power of the media for peacebuilding and developing new strategies for countering the abuse of media during conflict. It addresses “Work in Zones of Conflict.”
  • Reporters Instructed In Saving Colleagues (“RISC”). RISC is dedicated to promoting the safety of freelance journalists in combat zones. RISC trains and equips freelance journalists in all media to treat life-threatening injuries on the battlefield. RISC training is provided to experienced, published freelance conflict journalists.
  • The Committee to Protect Journalists promotes press freedom worldwide and takes action wherever journalists are attacked, imprisoned, killed, kidnapped, threatened, censored, or harassed.
  • Reporters Without Borders developed a highly specialized sphere of activity devoted to providing material, financial, and psychological assistance to journalists assigned to dangerous areas. The organization morally and financially assists persecuted journalists and their families and offers material assistance to war correspondents to enhance their safety.