Some time ago, I worked as a research assistant for the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma then based in Seattle, Wash.

My stint was in the earlier days of the Dart Center which is now part of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

Research assistant duties were varied and many including writing reviews of books by media professionals who had covered war zones, reading in-depth news coverage of horrific acts of violence, working on the Center’s then fledgling website and interviewing print and photojournalists about their experiences in the field.

A fellow assistant and I traveled to Minnesota for a photojournalism conference to talk with news photographers and editors about their experiences covering such events as 9/11. An interview with a photo editor for Sports Illustrated particularly comes to mind. She had recently been promoted to her editor position and spoke candidly and vividly about taking photos at an outdoor soccer game with the ruins of the World Trade Center visible in the distance as she looked through her viewfinder.

It was at the same conference photojournalist Cheryl Diaz Meyer, who later was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for her work, spoke about her experiences covering war zones. She entered a meeting room at the conference dressed in a blue burka she wore while on assignment in the Middle East. A burka, perhaps best described as enveloping, is worn by women in some Islamic traditions to cover their bodies while in public. Ms. Diaz Meyer had to be led into the room, dimly lit to accommodate the projection of her photographs, because the burka covered her from head to foot. Her photos showed war scenes such as soldiers standing on tanks as she described running while bullets whizzed nearby or donning her burka as a disguise of sorts to visit sensitive areas. Other times Diaz Meyer would pile her hair into a knit cap she also brought along for those of us at the conference to see.

As part of our work at the Dart Center at the time the effort was to make sense of what it meant to cover violence as media professionals.

But can sense be made of what it means when journalists themselves become the center of a violent act warranting news coverage?

On Aug. 26, journalists Alison Parker and Adam Ward were gunned down while at work for television station WDBJ7 in Virginia. Parker, a reporter and Ward, a photojournalist, were on assignment when shots fired by a former co-worker took their lives and left severely wounded the woman who was to be featured in their story. It was a live feed which meant colleagues of Parker and Ward were witnesses to the horrible scene as were viewers of the newscast.

Out of habit, I visited the Dart Center website to try to make sense of what happened.

The Dart Center staff offered tips for newsroom managers in charge of newsrooms like the one at WDBJ7, newsrooms left stunned by violent events done to colleagues. There were links to information on dealing with the traumatic images and what news professionals can do to help themselves deal with such events.

As part of research for the Dart Center so long ago, I spoke to a Lehigh Valley area photographer who spoke with me not only about her work covering traumatic events but also about when, as a teen, she and a group of friends were subjects of a news photographer’s lens when their friends were lost in a car accident on prom night. She talked about how the tragedy as well as the news image stayed with her into her professional career.

Often it is a struggle to make sense of trauma when covering it or being covered because of it.

In the end, there really is no sense to be made of what happened to Alison Parker and Adam Ward and so many others lost to violence while on the job.

April Peterson

editorial assistant

East Penn Press

Salisbury Press