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The South African National Editors’ Forum (Sanef) brought journalists and editors together for specialised mental resilience training, highlighting the emotional toll of modern newsrooms and offering practical strategies to build healthier, more supportive workplace cultures.
By ANWAR OMAR AND YASEEN BARDIEN
On 7 and 8 July, the South African National Editors’ Forum (Sanef) hosted a two-day Mental Resilience Training event at the Rockefeller Hotel in Cape Town, with one day dedicated to journalists and the other to editors.
The sessions, titled ‘Surviving and Thriving in a Newsroom’, were facilitated by award-winning South African journalists Katy Katopodis and Qaanitah Hunter.
The origins of the programme
Katopodis said the idea for the training programme came after sending a reporter to cover a vigilante incident in Alexandra, Johannesburg.
The reporter phoned her after witnessing a man being necklaced. Katopodis instructed her to leave the scene, but they agreed to file the story anyway. Shortly afterwards, members of the crowd recognised the reporter and turned on her.
‘I said, “Come back!” ’ Katopodis recalled.
What followed was an emergency debriefing session.
Katopodis said the experience convinced her that journalists needed structured support designed specifically for the realities of the profession, rather than generic workplace wellness programmes.
Hunter explained that she began researching international best practice on newsroom resilience while developing an approach that would work in South African newsrooms.
She said many organisations rely on outside experts who do not understand the realities journalists face. Recalling one consultant who recommended puppy yoga, Hunter said: ‘We’re not going to bring goats to the newsroom.’
Instead, she said, the programme focused on practical ways to build resilience in an industry where many newsrooms struggle to fund basic reporting, let alone therapists.
Newsroom pressures
Against the backdrop of shrinking newsrooms and increasing workloads, Sanef’s Mental Resilience Training focused on how journalists and editors can better manage the pressures of the profession.
Katopodis said South Africa’s relentless news cycle leaves journalists moving constantly from one breaking story to the next.
‘We are not short of news stories in this country,’ she said. ‘With one breaking story after the next, we all get caught up in this vortex of news, which is often very grim.’
She described the relentless pace as a ‘news cyclone’, with journalists moving from one traumatic story to the next, often with little time to pause and debrief.
Speaking to editors on Wednesday, Hunter said they face a different kind of pressure. They support reporters dealing with traumatic stories while also balancing the demands of management, owners and commercial pressures.
‘You are sandwiched between two pressure ecosystems,’ she said. ‘The best part of what we do is managing the stories. The worst part is everything else.’
Hunter described this as leadership fatigue.
Both facilitators argued that supporting journalists’ wellbeing is essential to sustaining the profession.
‘Healthy journalism is very much a healthy democracy. We need a healthy media in order to have a good democracy,’ said Hunter.
She warned that unhealthy newsroom cultures often normalise harmful coping mechanisms. Reflecting on her own career, Hunter said journalists sometimes wear these behaviours as ‘a badge of honour’.
Hunter said unhealthy coping mechanisms are normalised because they initially appear to help journalists perform under pressure, but ultimately become harmful.
Both facilitators challenged the idea that resilience means simply pushing through difficult situations. Instead, they described it as the ability to recover, adapt and know when to seek support.
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What editors must do differently
Hunter said editors play a key role in shaping the culture of a newsroom. Teams, she said, notice what their leaders do more than what they say.
An editor who sends messages at midnight, never takes leave and constantly runs on empty models that behaviour for the rest of the team.
‘Your team notices what you do more than what you say.’
Practical proposals
Hunter said one of the ways editors can support their teams is by creating predictability wherever possible.
In a profession defined by unpredictability, editors can make the predictable elements more reliable by publishing rosters in advance, following standard operating procedures and maintaining a consistent daily diary structure.
‘These things give teams the security to withstand the unpredictable. Listening is often more valuable than fixing.’
Hunter also reminded editors that they are not therapists.
‘Your role is to notice, support and refer.’
She said reporters showing persistent withdrawal, significant behavioural changes or expressions of hopelessness should be referred for professional support.
Building resilient newsrooms
Hunter said the training comes at a time when the media industry is under increasing strain. She said shrinking newsrooms and ongoing retrenchments have left many journalists uncertain about the future of the profession.
‘Every day we see headlines … the best journalists in the world are being retrenched,’ she said.
Near the close of the second session, Hunter explained that resilience is built through systems, not individual heroics. She described the industry as a storm that many journalists are having to navigate.
‘I can see the storm that we are currently in. Some of us are in the eye of the storm. Some of us are already facing the turbulence. Then trying to train young people to withstand the storm has been seriously challenging,’ she said.
Throughout the two-day programme, both facilitators emphasised that supporting journalists should not depend on individual resilience alone. They argued that healthy newsrooms require systems that help staff cope with the pressures of the profession.
Hunter said resilient newsrooms are built through clear expectations, manageable workloads, open communication, regular feedback and opportunities for staff to recover after difficult assignments.
Mental resilience a sector-wide challenge
The Cape Town sessions were part of a national rollout. Johannesburg has already been visited and Pretoria is next.
The programme forms part of Sanef’s effort to address a sector-wide challenge. The cyclone of reporting does not discriminate. It affects newsrooms in every city, every day. Journalists and editors deserve more than instructions to be tough in order to survive. They deserve the systems, the culture and the support that enable survival, not as an act of individual heroism but as a professional standard.
