Written by Kemiso Wessie for AJEN.
When news breaks, journalists are often the first to witness distress, conflict, and tragedy yet the psychological dimensions of their work remain underexplored in journalism education. To address this gap, Fojo Media Institute, through a EU funded global consortium called AGILE, has launched a new initiative to co-design new extracurricular courses focused on stress and trauma in journalism education across Africa and beyond.
AGILE unites leading organisations in journalism and media development, including Fojo Media, CFI Développement Médias, Thomson Media, ARTICLE 19 and Internews Europe, which is the lead on the pilot project. Running until 2028, the programme is designed to strengthen journalism worldwide by highlighting tools, innovations, and sustainable practices that support media development. The initiative also has grants and mentoring opportunities connected to each course.
Fojo leads Workstream 5: The Future of Journalism, which focuses on universities and bridging the gap between academia and practice. In this capacity, Fojo is collaborating with approximately 30 universities across 13 countries to co-design and implement, alongside the stress and trauma course, three additional extracurricular courses: Closing the Climate Gap, Dig Deeper: Investigative Journalism for Female Students, and WMLT (Women Media Leaders of Tomorrow).
AJEN spoke to Sofie Byrnes Gullberg and Zelalem Tesfaye for details on this one-of-a-kind course. The aim of the stress and trauma co-design is to develop teaching models that are both collaborative and locally grounded, ensuring that journalism students are better equipped to manage the emotional and psychological challenges of their future profession.
Sofie Byrnes Gullberg, Project Manager at Fojo
Sofie Byrnes Gullberg, Project Manager at Fojo, leads this ambitious multi-country project. “The scope is very wide,” she explains. “But developing solid and sustainable relationships with key partners is super important. Investing in that in the beginning [gives] so much back further down the line.”
The project, still in its early stages, is being piloted through extracurricular courses co-designed by educators from different countries. Among the first modules to be implemented are on stress and trauma as well as climate change reporting.
“This is very much focused on the university setting,” says Gullberg. “It’s about putting pedagogical approaches to the test, but also [ensuring] that the universities themselves will own the course.” To achieve this, they have conducted workshops with lecturers from various universities, bringing together educators from different countries to collaboratively co-design the course.
Gullberg calls the co-design process “a different way of developing courses,” drawing on the expertise of educators from diverse national contexts. The stress and trauma pilot highlights this collaborative, context-driven approach, led by educators from Ethiopia, Somalia, and Rwanda.
“This is a very timely course,” says Zelalem Tesfaye, Assistant Professor of Journalism and Director of Broadcast Media at Bahir Dar University in Ethiopia. “Its actually targeting countries which are currently stricken by different trauma-related crises like war, stress, workplace stress, burnout, conflict, and civil war.
Zelalem Tesfaye, Assistant Professor of Journalism and Director of Broadcast Media at Bahir Dar University, Ethiopia
When journalism curricula were examined, they found that the issue of stress and trauma had been given little attention. “This project will prepare students who will be journalists tomorrow to be equipped with strategies for managing stress and the trauma in their careers paths,” explains Tesfaye.
Gullberg agrees. “We really want to raise the topic and start the conversation about stress and trauma, how it affects you as a person but also how it affects you in your professional job as a journalist,” she says.
The extracurricular format allows flexibility across diverse educational systems, with the hope that universities will eventually push to integrate these topics into their formal curricula. In total, nine countries will participate in the stress and trauma pilot with each journalism school bringing its unique strength, perspective, and academic approaches.
Adapting to local realities
One of the core strengths of the initiative is its adaptability. As Tesfaye explains, “We’re designing extracurricular activities tailored for Ethiopian journalism educators and students in particular. It’s context-specific and culture-specific.”
Workshops are first held at the regional level, bringing together educators from several countries and then “localised” through national sessions. “It’s important to bring in experience from other countries,” Gullberg says, and then ground it in the local context so it works in each country.
For Tesfaye, this local grounding also means bridging academia and the newsroom. He explains that they are trying to connect the classroom with the newsroom by inviting experts who have years of experience managing stress and trauma, “It’s [also] an opportunity for students to get connected with veteran journalists.”
Preventing re-traumatisation
Given the sensitive nature of the topic there is consideration of the emotional risks involved. Tesfaye emphasises that safety and confidentiality are integral to the design process. They are currently consulting with psychologists and working journalists to ensure the course avoids re-traumatisation.
Gullberg adds that while the course will address emotional well-being, it is not intended to be therapeutic. “Educators won’t go in and do any clinical work,” she says. If there’s someone who needs professional help, they will be referred to the right people, “They [educators] are here to start the conversation but not act as a therapist,” Gullberg explains.
Both agree that avoiding these discussions would be more harmful than confronting them. “Not talking about stress factors or what happens to your brain is a much bigger worry,” Gullberg notes.
Institutional change
For now, stress and trauma education remains extracurricular, a strategic choice, given the challenges of curriculum reform. “We realise that trying to push this into the curricula would be a mammoth task,” Gullberg admits. “We’re here to show the relevance and the need of the [course] and provide the support we can.”
In Ethiopia, however, Tesfaye sees a long-term path to integration. As time goes by, he hopes the programme’s success can lead to mainstreaming stress and trauma education into journalism curricula and other disciplines.
Shifting cultures
Early lessons from the project point to a clear hunger for change. “There’s a genuine interest to learn more about the topic because it’s relevant everywhere,” says Gullberg. “In many newsrooms, we still see that it’s still a bit of a stigma to talk about these aspects. But it’s about asking your colleague, ‘How are you feeling today?’ and genuinely listen.”
Fojo’s regional approach, combining African experiences with cross-country collaboration has already sparked new forms of knowledge exchange. Gullberg adds that the method they’re implementing is particularly exciting, bringing a regional perspective and seeing what each country can bring to the table, “I think these countries really can share and learn from each other,” she says.
Tesfaye echoes the sentiment, noting that this initiative fills a critical gap in African journalism education. In the Horn of Africa, ongoing conflict, newsroom pressures, and economic challenges have made stress and trauma common, yet largely ignored, issues. Long considered taboo, even in academic circles, these topics have lacked intervention.
The programme is a timely and essential step in equipping future journalists to navigate a challenging and often perilous media landscape. As journalism continues to evolve, this programme offers a hopeful model that equips tomorrow’s storytellers not just with skills, but with the emotional resilience to use them wisely.
Article first published by AJEN, The African Journalism Education Network.