Shining a Light on Dark Stories
2023 ASJA Virtual Annual Conference
Covering people who’ve faced or witnessed fearful circumstances beyond their control requires empathy, ethics, and self-care, along with insights into how trauma impacts both the brains and bodies of you and your sources. This session will offer up guidance based on real experience of both primary and secondary trauma, and offer attendees tangible tools, guidelines, and resources collected from experts in the field.
Naseem Miller (she/her/hers) is the senior editor for health at The Journalist’s Resource, a project of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School. She joined JR in 2021 after working as a health reporter in local newspapers and national medical trade publications for two decades. Immediately before joining JR, she was a senior health reporter at the Orlando Sentinel, where she was part of the team that was named a 2016 Pulitzer Prize finalist for its coverage of the Pulse nightclub mass shooting. Miller co-started and administers the Journalists Covering Trauma Facebook group and speaks to journalists about trauma, self-care and trauma-informed reporting.
Jessica DuLong (she/her/hers) is a Brooklyn-based author, journalist, editor, and book collaborator/coach. Her longstanding interest in trauma further intensified while reporting her book, Saved at the Seawall: Stories from the September 11 Boat Lift, the definitive history of the world’s largest waterborne evacuation. Interviews for Saved, which was featured in Spike Lee’s docuseries, NYC Epicenters, called upon DuLong to lead survivors through memories of their most harrowing moments, while reconciling her own PTSD from serving at the World Trade Center as a USCG-licensed marine engineer aboard retired 1931 NYC fireboat John J. Harvey. Today, DuLong writes regularly about books for CNN.com and collaborates with writers and authors on works about trauma, psychology, and neuroscience; memoir, history, and health; race, equity, and cross-cultural connection; as well as gender, parenting, and justice.
