Staying Alive S02E08: Trauma-Informed Broadcasting and Mental Well-being with Tamara Cherry and Mark Henick
32:24
SPEAKERS
Tamara Cherry, Winston Sih, Mark Henick


Winston Sih  00:05
Covering the news is hard. Long hours, strict deadlines, not to mention more frequent occurrences of horrifying events like mass shootings, hate-motivated attacks and politics driving people apart. For many daily news reporters across Canada, covering crime is a reality. They are on the front lines and report from difficult places. And for many years, reporters and producers chalked it up to trauma being part of the gig, that you need a degree of thick skin to succeed in the industry. But what if there was a different, kinder way to think of it? Is that possible? I'm Winston Sih. This week on Staying Alive, we discuss mental health, wellness and trauma informed reporting. 


When we think about the work a reporter does, it's important to think about how a source could be impacted by the interview. Reporters aren't just grabbing a soundbite. The interview can further impact a person's experiences and traumas. That's where the idea of trauma informed reporting comes in. But we also know witnessing these traumas also affects reporters and journalists in the field. But how do we take care of ourselves as journalists while being mindful of the sources we work with in the field? My next guests bring unique perspectives to the conversations. Tamara Cherry is a trauma researcher and communications consultant and founder of Pickup Communications and has spent 15 years of her career as a crime reporter for the Toronto Star, Toronto Sun, and CTV News Toronto. She is also author of the new book, "The Trauma Beat: A Case For Rethinking The Business of Bad News." She joins us from Regina. We're also joined by Mark Henick, a mental health advocate, award winning author of "So-Called Normal" and host and producer of the podcast Modern Minds, and he's also a Master of Journalism candidate with The Creative School at Toronto Metropolitan University. Mark is in Toronto with me now. Welcome to you both.


Mark Henick  02:10
It's a pleasure to be here.


Tamara Cherry  02:11
Pleasure to be here.


Winston Sih  02:13
I'd like to start by setting the scene. Tamara, you've seen the industry through many different eras, if you will. You were in print at the Toronto Star and The Sun. You were at CFTO at CTV. What is trauma informed reporting? And why do you think this idea of trauma informed reporting and mental health is so important in the work we do today?


Tamara Cherry  02:33
If you would have asked me whether I was practicing trauma informed journalism, say four years ago, first, I would have said, "Well, what the heck is that? I've never heard that term before. What does it mean to be trauma informed?" If you would have asked me if I was trauma informed, I would have said, "Well, of course I am. I work with trauma survivors and victims on like a near daily basis, if not more for the last 15 years. What more could I possibly know about trauma." But what I've learned through my research, as I was examining the impact of the media on trauma survivors and the impact of trauma on members of the media, is that I didn't really know anything about trauma. There's things that I know now that I can reflect back and say, oh, yeah, okay, so that makes sense. But I actually didn't understand it at all. And I did not understand the impact of the work that I was doing on the people that I was interviewing and reporting on. So why is it important? In a nutshell, it is important because we are, by the very nature of our traditional story gathering and news telling process, causing harm to the people that we're reporting on. And in turn, we're also causing harm to ourselves. We want to minimize that harm, if not eliminate the harm as much as we can to both the people we're reporting on and to ourselves. So in that sense, it's very important that we learn about trauma.


Winston Sih  03:44
Absolutely. And Mark, as a news consumer, you also come at things as a mental health advocate. You're at a really interesting intersection here. You've had a lot of success, you have a TED Talk, talking about mental health and trauma and emotion. So mental health isn't new to you. But it does seem, in recent years, this conversation has grown in importance. Why do you think this is so much more relevant today?


Mark Henick  04:07
Well, certainly the efforts of mass media have advanced the mental health cause, particularly in the last 10 years. We've seen more celebrities than ever opening up about mental health and mental illness and that does make a difference. It helps to normalize it more in media. We've seen great work by people like Tamara and so many others who are doing trauma informed journalism featuring mental health related stories in a safe and effective way. And that's the important part, that the old adage, if it bleeds, it leads, turns out to actually hurt people, and we have good evidence on that. So talking about mental health and trauma in a healthy, productive way is really quite healing and I think people are starting to get that message. Now, it's a double edged sword however. We've swung the pendulum of mental illness back almost too far toward the brain illness side of the spectrum, where we're calling people sick, we're calling them broken and that sometimes has the opposite effect. That sometimes can embed stigma further. So I think that's the next stage in our media discussions about mental health and trauma,


Winston Sih  05:02
Right. And I like that you bring up "if it bleeds, it leads." It doesn't always have to be that mindset and there can be a different approach in how we cover news in a way that doesn't sensationalize, but also considers the sources that we work with to ensure that we're telling the stories in a respectful way. Tamara, you've spent over 15 years in the industry in the field. And now you've pivoted your work; you founded your agency with a focus around changing the system. Can you talk a little bit about that work and why you're so passionate about that now?


Tamara Cherry  05:34
Well, even before I began my research examining the impact of the media on trauma survivors, I identified a huge gap in survivor support victim services. In that, as a journalist, if there was a homicide in the GTA, I was going and knocking on the door of that homicide victim's family, quite often within 24 hours, or as soon as I had the information to find them. And, I was talking to them. There was nobody there to support them, no victim services personnel, nobody to really guide them through whether they should talk or whether they had to talk. It was basically me just kind of going in there when they've got many other more important things to be doing quite often. And then I would leave, and my colleague from another new station would be waiting at the sidewalk, and then they would go and have their kick at the can. And on and on and on. I wanted to create a public relations firm that supports those trauma survivors. That is what my company was set up to do. I launched it right before the pandemic, I had all these meetings set up with lead services. I had some really great discussions, but then the pandemic hit and everything came to a halt. So I said, "Okay, I'm gonna check off this next big thing I wanted to check off my list," which was this research project that an academic friend of mine had suggested. "I want to do some sort of research driven by the voices of survivors so that I can produce some sort of like training materials to victim service providers." That was my focus at the beginning, like, victim service providers, homicide investigators, they need to understand why it's important that they properly support their survivors. But as I started this research, and it all began with a survey for homicide and traffic fatality survivors, I realized that it was way bigger than I thought it was, and that I was going to learn so much from this research, and that, in turn, journalists, would be able to learn so much from it. While, I do a lot of talks to, you know, victim service providers. survivor support worker type audiences, a big focus of mine now is working with journalists. Pickup Communications now, it is a public relations firm that supports trauma survivors and the stakeholders who surround them because there's so many different stakeholders that I work with in my effort to tell these very important stories better.


Mark Henick  07:35
Can I just jump in here on a point about when journalists speak with trauma survivors? As a trauma survivor myself, I don't think it is inherently harmful all the time. Tamara raises a really good point, though, around when she speaks with that victim and then another reporter comes in and speaks with that victim. The victim themselves don't often know the difference between different reporters. So I think it really speaks to the need of having that individual person having a trauma informed perspective, because it can actually be an incredibly healing, incredibly empowering, to be able to finally own your own story. So, we have to really treat the journalism as a controlled act of sorts, because when you're getting into people's story in that way, you have the risk of doing harm, but you also have the promise of doing great healing work too.


Tamara Cherry  08:22
Yes, and that's such a great point. I'm so happy that you raised it Mark. I interviewed or surveyed more than 100 trauma survivors as part of my research. Those are survivors of homicides, traffic fatalities, mass violence, sexual violence, human trafficking. And, overwhelmingly, I can literally count on one hand of all those survivors how many survivors didn't have any negative impacts from the media, but many of them also had positive impacts from the media. What I found, however — and this is where I say, by the very nature of our news gathering and storytelling process, we're causing harm — they were much more likely to experience harm from the media, experience for the trauma, if they were contacted in the immediate aftermath of, say, their traumatic event or their traumatic loss. But, they were more likely to have a positive impact if their interactions with the media took place several weeks, months, even years after the fact and they felt that they could really create those positive relationships with reporters. I had reached out to some homicide survivors who I had interacted with myself as a reporter as part of my research because I wanted to see if their recollections were the same as my recollections. And there was one woman in particular whose son was murdered in Toronto. And I always knew that she was very grateful for the work that I did, particularly when it got to court. So we're talking about, like, a couple years after the homicide happened. But I was interested to see whether she remembered that I was one of those reporters that was in her apartment less than 24 hours after her son was murdered. And when she described in her survey the media arriving at her home in the immediate aftermath, it was all negative. It was a complete invasion of her privacy. You're saying you're grateful for me but I was that journalist and she didn't remember it. So I know that I caused harm, even though I caused good stuff to come later on. A big focus of the work that I do now in both supporting survivors, but then in also training journalists and everything is, as you said, it's giving that control to the survivor. When they have none. It's ensuring that they can give informed consent to do that interview, that the journalists can give them some agency in how the story is told. And some of this stuff can come across as pretty radical for working journalists, because as journalists, we are, of course, inherently very entitled and that's usually a very good thing when we're holding politicians to account or school board trustees or whatever. But when it comes to trauma survivors, I always quote Selene San Felice - she's a mass violence survivor and a journalist in the United States - "When it comes to trauma, we need to recognize that it's just different." We need to be treating our interactions and our interviews with trauma survivors differently. And when you said Mark, having a trauma informed person there, I would say even a step further, you need to have somebody who's trauma informed there advocating for the survivor, and somebody who's media informed, because I've met a lot of victim service providers over the years. Usually, it's the defensive mode; "I need to protect the survivor from the media." And that isn't always the best thing. I understand why they do it now and quite often, I will tell survivors the same in certain circumstances. But it's just because we're so lacking in proper trauma informed training and collaboration. Victim service providers typically don't work hand-in-hand with journalists to properly support survivors.


Mark Henick  11:29
Well, I think so much of this too though, on the behalf of the interviewer really comes down to emotional intelligence, social intelligence, empathy. Some of the people who have told my story best and left a lasting positive impact on me, that's really I think the core factor that they had. Marci Ien comes to mind or Avis Favaro, Tracy Moore at City is great at this. Really being present with the person in contrast to, I can think of a few people where I've sat there as the subject thinking, "This person is just trying to extract my story from me for clicks." You feel used after that. So I think really coming back to that, practicing presence with the subject and letting them know that you're not in it to commodify their story, that you're there as a human being.


Winston Sih  12:11
You've mentioned some great names at CTV, City as well. What are some of the best practices you see as a mental health advocate, but also, as someone studying journalism, as a news consumer yourself? Where do you see some of the opportunities for journalists to better the work in the approach that they have going into some of these really difficult stories that they cover?


Mark Henick  12:31
I think certainly starting from a point of openness. So often it's easy, especially at the direction of a hardcore editor or producer to go in there and know the blanks that you want to fill in for your story, you know, "I need this person to say X, Y, and Z so I can get my great clip, have a good headline." That's what makes people feel used, when you already have the story written in your head. Instead, coming into it with an open minded realization that you're probably gonna get a lot of stuff here that you can't use, but that's part of the process too, that's part of the trust building and it takes time. We say this to people who are trying to help others, whether it's a family member or a colleague or co worker too, if you're going to intervene in somebody's life, make sure that you've carved out the time in your schedule to do that, because that's the least you can do I think.


Winston Sih  13:15
Right, and Tamara, you've created a guide for victims and survivors when dealing with the media. You've also written a new book, "The Trauma Beat," which we'd like to congratulate you on as well. Can you talk a little bit about those two different resources you've created?


Tamara Cherry  13:28
I've got a bunch of stuff on my website. I've so much more content to roll out. I just haven't had the chance to put it together. Everything that I create, I'm just hoping to shed a light on how we can do things better as journalists, as victim service providers. And I want to validate the feelings also of survivors and what they have experienced. But then also, I've been trying to create a safe space for journalists to recognize the importance of taking care of their own mental health. So I have on my website, my Frequently Asked Questions for victims and survivors. That is something I update now and then. I could probably go in there and update now, see something there where I've learned more and I can add to it. But basically, when victims and survivors are faced with media attention, it's quite often during the darkest hours of their lives and I don't expect a homicide survivor in the first 24 hours when the media is knocking on their door to be finding my website and find some comfort in these. But I'm hoping that somebody can Google tips for engaging with the media and be able to like get some control in their hands and guide the process a little bit. I knew when I started my research project, there was a possibility that there could be a book that came from it, but my focus really initially was just on creating training materials for victim service providers and homicide investigators. And then as I said, as a journalist, as both of you know, when you have something that is so big and so significant, you want to scream it from the rooftops and you want everybody to listen to what you're saying. I knew very early on when I started getting those first survey responses back and with some of the experiences shared with me, that this was going to be significant and that people had to hear this. It wouldn't just be journalists or victim service providers. But that there was stuff in here that the general public had to hear in order to understand trauma. Because all of us are uncomfortable around trauma and they never know what to say and so many survivors have told me that it comes to a point that everybody around them sort of expects that they get over it. And journalists can be the same, like, you know, "Why wouldn't you want to talk to me, you already talked to that other reporter and, you know, a month has gone by, so it's not like I'm knocking on your door. I've been respectful. I've given you a whole month." I have resources on my website that are geared towards victims and survivors, I've got resources that are geared towards journalists, I've got videos, you know, with the voices of survivors, talking about what trauma informed journalism means to them. But this book had a lot of feedback from journalists, and victims service providers. I've also heard a lot just from members of the public who have already read it, and who have said, you know, "I didn't think that I would relate to this book, the way that I did. I'm not a survivor. I'm not a police officer. I'm not a victim service writer. I'm not a journalist. But this has gotten me thinking about the role that I can play in the news that I consume, and in the true crime podcasts that I listen to, and in the way that I interact with survivors." So, I hope that the book can have a broader impact on that.


Winston Sih  16:22
We know newsrooms have journalism standards and practices. All the three of us know that in those newsrooms that we've worked in, that's very much a real thing. Do you think these newsrooms are considering victims in how they develop these practices?


Tamara Cherry  16:35
So I think that on paper, some newsrooms do, but in practice, no. Part of my survey for journalists asked whether their newsroom had policies around reporting on trauma. And, just to give you an example of some of the feedback that I got back, I had two journalists from the same newsroom fill out the survey, one of them said, "Yes, there was a policy," and one of them said, "No," and both of them had worked there for several years. I can tell you in all the newsrooms that I've worked in, I wasn't aware of any sort of policy around that. I can also tell you that in the course of researching my book, I came across one case, in particular, where there was a trauma survivor who was definitely harmed by the media coverage of her son's homicide. Some of her supporters had filed a complaint to one of the regulatory bodies, and that body found that, indeed, this newsroom had policies, and they didn't abide by them. Because in all of my experience, as a journalist, we don't ever talk about the impact of our work on trauma survivors. It is about, as Mark said, going and extracting that story. I cared so much, I had compassion, I had empathy, but not understanding the impact of trauma on the brain and not understanding the impact of my work. I know I caused harm. So, for example, Mark, you had talked about earlier, taking that time to have that conversation, and understanding that in terms of building that trust, you're gonna get a lot of information that you're not gonna be able to use in your story. But the flip side to that then is, I've heard from a lot of trauma survivors through the course of my research that, "I sat down with this reporter and told them all these things, we talked for a half an hour, we talked for an hour, and they only use like two clips in the story, or just a few sentences in the newspaper." It was never explained to them, the editing process and the fact that even though I'm talking to you for half an hour, my whole story is only going to be a buck 45 or two minutes tops. Well, that means that I'm only getting to use two or three clips from that survivor, in addition to everybody else that I interviewed for that story. And I never really did a great job of explaining that to the survivors. So that in itself can cause harm if we're not explaining that process adequately. I really, truly believe and I agree with Mark, trauma journalism is important. The stories need to be told, but they need to be told in a way that we are at least mitigating the harm to the survivor as much as possible, if not eliminating it and hopefully helping them benefit in some way and that means that as part of that extended conversation that you have before, you know, you hit record, you're asking them, "What do you want to get out of this story? Why are you talking to me? What message do you want to get across?" And then you better be down sure that that is in the story, if not the focus of the story, if that's why they are agreeing to the interview,


Mark Henick  19:20
That really speaks to psychological safety in the interview context as well, right? Setting clear expectations for what it is you're actually doing and being very candid that you have an important story, I'm going to listen to that entire story, but I'm only able to take three points, what are our top three points here? And how can we string them together into a narrative that is reflective of the whole? I think most people get that if the careful and caring time is taken to explain it and you're right Tamara. I've done hundreds of interviews on my story and relatively few people actually take the time to do that, few journalists take the time to do that. That kind of training really needs to start in journalism school. We have to have employer guidelines for sure that are out there. But once you get into the working world, you're turning out stories. Until that culture changes, we have to feed the working world of journalism from journalism schools with trauma trained professionals.


Tamara Cherry  20:10
And Mark and all those interviews that you've done about your own trauma, not many people would explain to you that there's only going to be room for a few key points, but how many times did you have somebody stick a white card in front of you and explain, "I'm doing a white balance. This is why I'm doing this." Or how many times did somebody ask you, "Would you like somebody with you?" There's so many things that we can do. Like you said that safety is so important. Those safe and predictable circumstances. Something that I didn't appreciate as a journalist was how important it is to not surprise trauma survivors. So something I always tell journalists now is survivors should never be surprised by stories about their trauma, not with the words that we use with the questions that we ask. We should not be making trauma survivors flinch by telling stories about their trauma. In that sense, I think it really helps by giving them agency in that process. Ask them, "Are there any questions you want to avoid? Any unsafe spaces that you want to make sure that I don't take you down? Are there any things that you want to focus on?" And then you can put some questions together and send it over so that they can have an idea of what you're going to talk about, while also letting them know, "I may gear away from this question line, but I'll make sure to not ask you about X, Y, or Z, if that's going to be triggering for you.


Mark Henick  21:24
There's also I think, being able to manage the buyer's remorse that interview subjects sometimes experience. Emotional work is hard work. I still get exhausted in sharing the story sometimes because you go deep into it and you want to be authentic with the story and to tell it well, but then it's also extremely tiring after and you have all sorts of regrets, how you could have done it differently. I remember once the New York Daily News picked up a really well done version of my story of finding the man who saved my life, Mike Ricci. The original story was beautiful, but when the New York Daily News picked it up, and then later the Daily Mail in the UK, it was completely sensationalized, they pulled ridiculous pictures off of Facebook of both of us and I wasn't expecting that. So having a sense, too, of the wider world of the story, the legs that it will have, that kind of coaching in advance lets you know as a subject on the journalist behalf, that you have somebody on your team, that they're in it with you and they're trying to tell the story faithfully. I think that means a lot too.


Winston Sih  22:20
And Mark, I want to bring up your research as well, because you've done some really interesting research around how our brain and mind interact with our environment. And I think there's definitely a lot that can be gleaned from that when we're talking about journalism, because I think for journalists, we put ourselves in some really difficult environments, we hear really difficult stories. And that in turn also affects journalists as well and I know that there are resources too for journalists, because we no doubt get affected by the stories we cover.


Mark Henick  22:48
Absolutely. We're designed to absorb our environments. That's how we survive. That's how we move through the world being able to be responsive. And I think where we see danger with some journalists is when they become so hardened, so crusty because of everything that they've seen that they actually start to experience a certain emotional blunting, that they actually physiologically and mentally can't take in any more trauma and that's not healthy. We know that the old adage goes, "women suffer and men die," because men don't then release that trauma in some productive, and healthy way. Often, it comes out in unhealthy ways through addiction, drinking, suicide sometimes. So we have to be able to train journalists on the reality that if you're out there absorbing other people's stories, observing other people's trauma, that vicarious trauma is going to build up inside you too. Especially if you think you're the toughest, most seasoned, hardened journalist in the world. So you have to be able to take care of yourself in that way. And that's where the employer really does become vitally important, is providing those resources and providing the flexibility to take care of yourself.


Winston Sih  23:51
Tamara, where does the responsibility lie when it comes to ensuring that newsrooms and journalists have the resources that they need so that they do approach these situations in the most responsible way while still serving consumers of the news in the way that needs to happen?


Tamara Cherry  24:10
Oh, boy, I'm still unpacking like everything that Mark just said because it resonated with me so deeply. The responsibility is immense and it needs to come from the top down. There are things that newsrooms can do right now that are very simple in terms of limiting or lessening trauma exposures. A camera guy that I worked with for years, he said, "create an Excel spreadsheet at the assignment desk and when there's breaking news, there's a traffic fatality, you can just bring up that spreadsheet and say, 'okay, yeah, that camera person is the closest but they just covered that traffic fatality yesterday, or let's say that there's a funeral coming oh, let's not send that person because they were at the scene yesterday when that body was pulled from the wreckage, so maybe let's not send them to the funeral unless they're saying that they want to." There are things we can do to lessen trauma exposures now, but also ensuring that there is just an environment where people feel safe to not feel okay one day and to not feel like if they go to the assignment desk and say, "I can't cover this funeral." Where they don't fear that they're going to be sidelined the next time when they are feeling ready to jump back into the trauma beat. We have a long way to go when it comes to that. There are a lot of newsrooms beginning to talk about the importance of self care and that is excellent. But what I always say is, you cannot take care of yourself, unless you're taking care of the people you're reporting on. I have spent a lot of money on therapy and I wish that I would have recognized the impact of vicarious trauma while I was a journalist, and I actually had benefits to cover this stuff. But I've spent a lot of money out of my pocket in the last few years dealing with vicarious trauma, but I've spent a lot more money dealing with moral injury. As I have come to sort through all of those — the chipping away at my soul every time I was knocking on a door when I felt like I shouldn't, or knocking on a door again, after I'd been told a few hours earlier that they didn't want to talk because one of my supervisors was saying, "Can you just try one more time?" You got to focus on self care, absolutely. Part of that self care comes with learning about trauma and practicing journalism in a trauma informed way. I may not be a daily news journalist now. But I also do a lot of work supporting, say, homicide survivors, and the work that I do with them is very similar to some of the work that I would have done as a journalist. So I will go to a homicide survivor now. Let's say I'm working with the Bolo Program. This is a nonprofit organization that I do a lot of work with, supporting their homicide survivors. The Bola Program is a nonprofit that helps police amplify cases where a warrant has been issued. And they brought me in to support the trauma survivors. And so I will go through that process with the survivors. And the way that I do it now, knowing that they're appreciative of the time that I'm taking and the care I'm taking with their story, like that is not causing me harm. I'm hyper aware of the heightened risk that I'm at for moral injury if I don't do this right. And as a result, I am so careful with the trauma survivors that I work with. It's not to say that trauma survivors all need to be handled with kid gloves. That can be very patronizing and offensive to some, but it is about just taking the time and recognizing the extra time and care that needs to happen when it comes to trauma survivors, preparing them for all the possibilities so that they're not surprised by images and everything, asking them what they want to get out of it, advocating on their behalf. All this stuff is so so important. So first, we need to have focus of the supervisors at the top of the media conglomerates. They need to foster this environment. But then, right down to the journalist. They need to learn about it and they need to be putting these things into play. But I will also say because this is a journalism school podcast, one of the things that I'm often asked by journalism professors when I go and speak to their students is "What do you say, though, to a student who - they want to go practice trauma informed journalism, but then they have that supervisor telling them, 'Go knock on that door again, like call down that list again,' What do you do?" And that's not an easy answer because the reality of the situation is our system isn't there yet. There are supervisors in a lot of newsrooms now who understand this stuff. And I'll often say to journalists, "Find a more senior journalist or a supervisor that you trust and have the conversation with them." But there's just so much responsibility. That work needs to happen before a lot of journalists, young journalists, will feel comfortable doing things in the right way.


Mark Henick  28:21
Well Tamara, I think this is also an important role for unions and unions in the media space, the media guild and others have been taking some important action on mental health in the workplace. Psychological harm in the workplace has been enshrined in law. It's recognized by every health and safety piece of legislation across the country and journalists ought to have the right to refuse psychologically dangerous work. If you're a sexual assault survivor, and you're being assigned to a story to cover a sexual assault, you should have the right to refuse that kind of work without reprimand or recrimination.


Tamara Cherry  28:52
I totally agree, but it's not the reality right now in a lot of places.


Mark Henick  28:56
It's not no and it's harming people. And this is why I think we need unions to step up and enshrine this into collective bargaining and collective agreements, but also recognizing that increasingly, media is being covered and produced by contract workers who don't have the protection of unions and collective agreements. I've heard from so many camera people who were just on contract out there to do a job and capture an image that they then carried with them for the rest of their lives. So we need to be able to fight for workplace rights with strong unions who have strong collective agreements that protect people's psychological health and safety.


Winston Sih  29:29
The idea of mental health and support in these newsrooms needs to come from the top down, and it requires education from the journalists front, it requires collaboration between journalists and newsrooms, but also between newsrooms and police departments and of course, how we approach victims and survivors there too. So Mark, I'm gonna give you the last word because we need to wrap up in a moment. Where do you see the biggest opportunity to better support journalists and those who interact with the media?


Mark Henick  29:58
Well, I certainly think it starts with us. You know, Tamara has made some really great points about improving the process, improving our newsrooms, improving journalism schools. But really, at the end of the day, we can sit around and wish and hope for a perfect world and that's great! We should work for a more perfect world. But at the end of the day, I think that starts with us as individual journalists. Doing the work ourselves, getting ourselves healthy and as relatively happy as we can and look, we see this in the mental healthcare space as well, where somebody else probably isn't going to give you the help that you need. So you have to cobble together your own way and I think we can motivate journalists to do that to seek out resources that help them to learn more about trauma and how to be a better human when interviewing other humans because that's what it comes down to.


Winston Sih  30:40
Well, we know this is so important in today's news economy, mental health is top of mind in so many industries. So I couldn't think of a better way to use this topic to end this season. So I just want to thank you both for joining us on Staying Alive today. 


Mark Henick  30:55
Thanks, Winston.


Winston Sih  30:56
Thank you, Winston and thank you Mark. Loved listening to you. 


Mark Henick  30:59
Thanks, Tamara. 


Winston Sih  31:00
Tamara Cherry is a founder at Pickup Communications and is the author of the new book, "The Trauma Beat: A Case For Rethinking The Business Of Bad News." And Mark Henick is a mental health advocate, award winning author of, "So-Called Normal" and host and producer of the podcast Modern Minds.  As we wrap up another season of Staying Alive, I think about the new topics we've covered and how relevant they are to the journalism industry today. From the reality of freelancing, to the new frontier of artificial intelligence and of course, mental health and wellness. They're all complex issues reporters are dealing with today and they are challenging but greater than ever, and conversations like these need to happen to ensure the success of local newsrooms from coast to coast to coast. I hope these conversations have contributed to a better understanding of the nuances and the discussions newsrooms need to have and that we were able to give you some food for thought so we can collectively drive a thriving news economy into the future. I'd like to thank you again for tuning in. And for one last time this season, I'm Winston Sih.