October 2013

As Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast in 2005, AT&T engineer Marian Croak found inspiration for what turned out to be a very good idea from a very unlikely source. In 2003, AT&T had helped American Idol set up a voting system that relied on text messages rather than voice calls. This was a big deal because, at the time, text messaging was still new. Some 22% of respondents to a 2008 informal poll on AT&T’s website said that they learned to text in order to vote on the show.

Now, Croak thought, a similar system could be used to accept donations by text message. “I know those sound like very different situations, but you can use the same implementation for both of those,” she says. Instead of conveying votes made by text message to an operator, in other words, AT&T could pass on donations made by text message to a charity. Customers would see the donation as a charge on their phone bills.

For months after witnessing the plane crash into the Pentagon on 9/11 — and immediately springing into action to cover the story — Mike Walter was plagued by repeated nightmares. Walter, a former WUSA Washington anchor who, at that time, was working as a USA Today video reporter, grew increasingly depressed, becoming distant at home. His boss took note of the change, and offered counseling. “This is something you can’t medicate,” Walter says. It took him nearly a year to recognize his problems as symptoms of PTSD. He served as a fellow at Columbia University’s Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma, which is dedicated to helping journalists cover traumatic situations — and maintain their resiliency for doing so. Broadcast journalists, with whom the Dart Center works regularly, are being hit particularly hard, as the immediacy of providing wall-to-wall coverage, multiplatform reporting and stiff competition that now comes with covering traumatic events makes thoughtful, accurate reporting more difficult than ever. Bruce Shapiro, the Dart Center’s executive director, says both sides of the “journalism & trauma” equation are intertwined, as reporters suffer from the impact of ethical decisions or mistakes they make while covering traumatic events — or simply witnessing them, he says.