The 24-second news cycle is exhausting journalists. Here’s how they cope.
From meditation to muting notifications, reporters share the habits that help them stay informed without burning out
I ran across my wife’s iPad on the kitchen counter, and a bright sticky note she had placed on the stand caught my attention.
“Stay off the news!” it read.
Naturally, as someone who works in the news, I wanted to know why my partner was intent on staying away from the thing that pays our mortgage.
She told me the note was her therapist’s suggestion, a way to “balance news consumption from a perspective of limited time and brief exposure to it.”
My wife, Jennifer Elkins, is a mental health therapist. She said it’s easy to experience compassion fatigue from her work. “So when I see the news,” she said, “it affects me deeply — adding to the weight and knowledge of what my clients are dealing with on a regular basis.”
Related Knowledge Center: Inside the newsroom
As newsrooms struggle with rickety business models and precarious finances — as well as new technologies — they are deploying an array of editorial responses.
The Times and its critics | Washington Post mortem