![Dart Awards 2008](media/images/da_home_page.jpg)
Entries Now Being Accepted
The Dart Awards recognize exemplary newspaper, radio and online reporting on the impact of violence, crime, disasters and other traumatic events. Enter now. Deadline: Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2009.
|
Mumbai's Untold Stories
By Moni Basu Obscured by headlines of threatened Westerners and "India's 9/11" are ordinary Indians, coping with the all-too-familiar aftermath of November's terrorist attacks.
|
![A frightened woman weeps during a drug sweep by Tijuana Police officers in Colonia Chula Vista in Tijuana, Mexico. (Photo by Sandy Huffaker/Getty Images)](media/images/Mexico_11_10_08_300.jpg)
Mexico's Journalists Under Siege
By Stan Alcorn An unprecedented spike in violence is testing the skills and freedoms of the press in North America's youngest democracy.
|
![Flowers on the fence where Matthew Shepard was murdered.](media/images/Matthew_shepard_fence.jpg)
Revisiting Matthew Shepard's Murder
By Kerry Drake
An editor at the Casper (Wyo.) Star-Tribune offers a look behind the scenes at reporting the murder of Matthew Shepard and covering its tenth anniversary. |
![Preparing for Gustav, New Orleans](media/images/Gustav_New_Orleans300.jpg)
Letter from New Orleans
By John Pope
With fish stew and a generator, one Times-Picayune staff writer relates how reporting on Gustav meant reliving Katrina on its anniversary — in the devastation it wreaked and the camaraderie it inspired.
|
![Peter Drought, ABC cameraman](media/images/portraits/drought_peterw300.jpg)
First Dead Body
By Peter Drought
A cameraman tells a story most journalists neither forget nor openly discuss: the first brush with another's death.
|
2008 Ochberg Fellows Announced
The Dart Center has awarded this year's Ochberg Fellowships to nine mid-career journalists dedicated to applying knowledge of emotional trauma to improving coverage of violent events.
Dan Grech, APM, "Marketplace"
Kelly Kennedy, Times News Service
Christina Lamb, Sunday Times, U.K.
Alysa Landry, Farmington Daily Times (Four Corners, N.M.)
Jeff Kelly Lowenstein, The Chicago Reporter
John Moore, Getty Images
Hollman Morris, Channel One, “Contravía,” Colombia
Devin Robins, NPR, "News & Notes"
Karyn Spencer, Omaha World-Herald
Jon Stephenson, TV3, New Zealand
Read more |
![Tbilisi Cliff Voldes](media/images/TbilisiRussiaAkhvlediani0814.jpg)
Letter From Tbilisi
By Margarita Akhvlediani
In the conflict between Georgia and Russia over South Ossetia, journalists are caught in the middle. To tell the "other" side's story is to risk your life; to not tell it is to risk prejudice hardening into ethnic hatred.
|
![Kenya violence Credit: Marcus Bleasdale](media/images/Bleasdale_Kenya_0421.jpg)
Kenyan Journalists Face the Aftermath
By Sherry Ricchiardi
The violence that for months wracked East Africa's most stable democracy endangered not only journalistic standards but local journalists themselves. Now they struggle to recover — both as individuals and as watchdogs of a precarious peace.
|
![2008 Dart Award](media/images/johannahome.jpg)
2008 DART AWARDS
Introducing the Award Winners
The Dart Center has announced the selection of the Cleveland Plain Dealer and National Public Radio as the winners of the 2008 Dart Awards for Excellence in Coverage of Trauma. Full coverage, including all the stories that won awards or honorable mentions, is available here.
Event:
Covering Violence Against Women
On Wednesday, April 23rd, The Dart Center held a reception for the winners of the 2008 Dart Awards for Excellence in Coverage of Trauma followed by a panel with the award winners: "Out of the Shadows: Reporting on Violence Against Women.". Check back next week for event coverage. |
![](media/images/porkypony300.jpg)
Video: Keeping It Real
Low crime rates mask an epidemic of violence among urban youth, but how can journalists get this story right? Watch streaming video of a Dart Center discussion at the Columbia School of Journalism with panelists:
• David Meeks, city editor, New Orleans Times-Picayune
• Joseph Rodriguez, photojournalist
• Clarivel Ruiz, Director of Youth Programs, Downtown Community Television Center... |
![](media/images/articles/immigration.jpg)
Video: ‘Points of Entry’
Covering Immigrants and Immigration
Video from a recent Dart Center discussion at the Columbia School of Journalism. Panelists include:
• Nina Bernstein, reporter, The New York Times
• Jacob Massaquoi, Director, African Refuge
• Arlene Morgan, Associate Dean of Prizes and Programs, Columbia Journalism School
• Mirta Ojito, Assistant Professor, Columbia Journalism School, and former reporter at The New York Times, The Miami Herald, and El Nuevo Herald ... |
![Members of the media work near the I-35W bridge that collapsed August 2, 2007 in Minneapolis, Minnesota.](media/images/articles/75944204.jpg)
How Newsrooms Can Prepare
It takes a single phone call, a single alert on a police scanner, a single wire-service bulletin bearing word of catastrophe to upend the
well-ordered chaos of a newsroom. In Minneapolis, it was
the interstate highway collapse ... |
![](media/images/articles/compass_1.jpg)
Documentary: Bearing Witness
The burden of bearing witness is borne by journalists around the globe who put themselves on the front line of conflict and tragedy in the course of their work. But what sustains them? How do they deal with trauma? This is subject of a one-hour documentary produced by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, recently aired on the weekly program Compass ... |
![](media/images/articles/veterans_2.jpg)
Hidden in Plain Sight
At a recent Dart Center panel at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, four pioneers in reporting the human impact of the Iraq War — photographer Nina Berman and reporters Mark Benjamin, Lisa Chedekel and Matthew Kauffman — discussed the challenges of reporting on these veterans. Click here for video from the panel, here for a summary and transcript ...
Interviewing veterans
By Joe Hight
A wounded veteran, mental health experts and journalists offer tips on how to interview soldiers returning from Iraq, the Middle East or Afghanistan ... |
A Victim's View
By Joe Hight
Sarah King Fortney, whose husband died in a plane crash last summer, shares her advice for journalists who cover tragedy ... |
![](media/images/articles/coffs_harbour.jpg)
Australian Journos Pen Open Letter
Senior Australian journalists, following a meeting at Coff's Harbour convened by Dart Centre Australasia, have drafted an open letter calling on the country's editors and news managers to foster “the resilience of news workers to handle the trauma and violence we face in our daily work” ... |
|
![The Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma](media/images/spacer.gif) |
New Year, New Links
Welcome to 2009. The Dart Center is back online for a busy couple of months; we'll keep you updated on our activities here. In the meantime, here are some stories you may have missed over the holiday season.
Times-Picayune photographer John McCusker's haunting multimedia retrospective on the "ghosts of Katrina."
Denver Post reporter (and 2004 Ochberg Fellow) Miles Moffeit's feature following the first year of freedom for Tim Masters, the first Colorado murder convict freed by DNA evidence.
The Committee to Protect Journalists' annual report on journalist deaths worldwide. ... Read more.
(Posted by Stan Alcorn, Monday, Jan. 15, 2009) |
DART CENTER PUBLICATIONS
Free Training for War Reporters
"Reporting War," a training booklet by Dart Fellow Sharon Schmickle, is now available upon request from the Dart Center. Read about the meeting of thirteen journalists that started the project here. To request a free copy of the booklet e-mail info@dartcenter.org. |
Experts Unite on Early Trauma Support
Should journalists and other witnesses of traumatic or violent events receive mandatory counseling or debriefing in the immediate aftermath? No, concludes a major article published in the July 1, 2007, edition of the American Journal of Psychiatry. |
Covering School Shootings
On Tuesday, Sept. 23, a culinary arts student killed nine fellow students, a teacher and himself in a campus shooting in Kauhajoki, Finland. For journalists covering the story, the Dart Center has assembled a selection of useful resources.
|
![Covering Deadly Disasters](media/images/China_Earthquake_05_14.jpg)
Telling the Catastrophe Story
Months have passed since China's worst earthquake in decades leveled entire towns just days after Cyclone Nargis claimed more than 130,000 lives in Myanmar's Irrawaddy Delta. For the millions affected, the disaster continues. For journalists reporting their stories, the Dart Center has assembled tip sheets, journalists' advice and reflection on past disasters and other resources of relevance.
|
|