Resumen de Behind the Headlines: New Technology´s Role in Stress Relief
The days of press clubs, where journalists met for a drink at least once a week, and often over-imbibed, are over. While women tended to sit in a circle and readily share unpleasant and often traumatic encounters from the working week, men preferred to talk around the topic, sitting side by side, avoiding any sign of emotion apart from gallows humour. Now, staff numbers in newsrooms have been cut, and those who remain work long hours to meet the new demand for news around the clock. Technology has meant some journalists do not return to the office at the end of the day so they can have a chat with colleagues or have time to unwind; instead they file their stories directly from the scene of the accident, or from the courtroom. Dworznik found that the more journalists talk on the job, the more they make sense of their work experiences – and the more they may be able to let go of work when they leave for the day. So how do today’s journalists manage to deal with what Rentschler described as ‘the emotional burdens of their work lives’? Using grounded theory to analyse semi-structured interviews with journalists who cover traumatic events on a regular basis, this research found that Facebook, blogs and mobile phones provide opportunities for personal narratives to help journalists ‘bypass’ and protect themselves from being harmed by the stories they cover. The implications of these findings are discussed in regard to the literature, the opportunities that these adaptive technologies offer and the implications for print journalists in particular.
