NCTJ launches free e-course on safety and resilience in response to industry concerns

Credit: Photo by Ümit Bulut on Unsplash

The National Council for the Training of Journalists (NCTJ) is launching a free e-course on safety and resilience, as it finds that four in five UK journalists are worried about their safety while doing their jobs.

That statistic comes from a survey the NCTJ put out in September, which also revealed that 90 per cent of journalists want more guidance and support on the topic.

The new e-course will be available on 7 November via the NCTJ’s Journalism Skills Academy, a learning platform funded by the Google News Initiative (GNI).

Read also: Tool for journalists: Storysmart, for online safety training

This e-course will cover online safety, resilience and mental health, safety on the job and domestic terrorism. These four modules take around two hours to complete and learners can earn a certificate on completion.

This comes after the NCTJ rolled out mandatory resilience training for journalism students on its accredited courses. In other words, this was only available to journalism students on paid-for courses. The NCTJ has now realised it must make critical safety and resilience training more widely accessible to journalists of all levels of experience.

 "We want this short course to be available to as many journalists and aspiring journalists as possible," Laura Adams, head of the Journalism Skills Academy at the NCTJ, told Journalism.co.uk via email.

"With budgets under increasing pressure, we've made this course one of the free resources in the growing portfolio of courses on our e-learning platform. We know from our research and discussion forums that resilience is such a hot topic for those teaching and studying journalism and for professional journalists and their editors."

The NCTJ has collaborated with multiple leading universities and organisations to produce the course, including Leeds Trinity University, University of Portsmouth, Ulster University and the Headlines Network.

This input is crucial. Leona O'Neill, course director of undergraduate journalism at Ulster University in Northern Ireland fed into the safety training alongside her colleague Dr Colm Murphy.

O'Neill has just published a book to open up a discussion about mental health in journalism, sharing the experiences of 16 journalists, including herself. O'Neill was left traumatised and subject to mass online abuse after witnessing the murder of journalist Lyra McKee in 2019.

"This is a hugely important resource that all journalism students, journalists and newsrooms should be tapping into," says O'Neill.

"The safety of our journalists is more important than ever and it is brilliant that the NCTJ is reflecting on, and acting upon, that need."

Headlines Network also brings valuable experience, having provided a space for training and talking about mental health in journalism in its first year of activity led by veteran journalists John Crowley and Hannah Storm.

"We are conscious about how we pass on advice onto colleagues. We've both worked in intense newsroom settings and we understand the pressures that are brought to bear on journalists," says Crowley.

"Our workshop with the NCTJ offers practical, common-sense advice on self-care - particularly around creating healthy work-life boundaries - but also on how to support colleagues in need."

The course also features contributions from working journalists from across the UK who share their own experiences.

Alex Crawford, NCTJ patron and Sky News special correspondent has faced many threats to her safety during her career. She said in the press release: "Learning how to be more resilient and how to recognise warning signs should be considered as important and necessary as studying shorthand, public administration and essential law for journalists. This e-learning programme is a great start."

Read also: Alex Crawford: I want to fight misinformation with transparency

Journalists are also invited to a virtual lunchtime discussion panel on 9 November to accompany the course, featuring Alex and Dr Rebecca Whittington, online safety editor at Reach plc, an industry-first position she started just over a year ago.

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