Really interesting insightful read
The author has been incredibly thoughtful on how to approach and present her findings and it’s very clear that the topic is of high importance to her.
I think it’s definately opened up a conversation in spaces that routinely have been closed off and this is insanely important.
Bravo for starting to nudge change to come around

An engaging piece of nonfiction that delves into the processes of crime reporting. Cherry brings a lot of humanity and open honesty to a difficult subject, and I enjoyed learning about how the news gets made. Really makes you face the tragic underneath of violent true crime and how our society's obsession with the macabre can really hurt the people left behind. A must-read for anyone interested in media and true crime reporting.

a poignant and eye-opening exploration of the intersection between journalism and trauma. Through vivid storytelling and introspective analysis, Cherry delves into the complexities of bearing witness to tragedy while maintaining journalistic integrity. She navigates the delicate balance between empathy and objectivity, shedding light on the human stories behind the headlines. Overall, thought-provoking and compassionate read that challenges readers to consider the broader implications of sensationalized media coveragema.

This book is very informative and well written. The author has managed to use a lot of compassion in her writing. It is a quick read and is emotional in places

Compelling every step of the way - Cherry does an excellent job explaining the trauma suffered by everyone involved in creating trauma journalism while passionately advocating for meaningful change in the field. While it is obvious every chapter was carefully crafted, the chapters on reporting indigenous trauma and human trafficking are masterfully done and quite moving. Clearly journalists and survivors/victims who have been contacted by the media are the main topic of Cherry’s work, but despite what other reviews have stated, I think that everyone is the target audience for this book. After all, who among us has not derived a sick satisfaction from watching a particularly gruesome news story as we pretend to cover our eyes? This book has reframed the way I think about media coverage and true crime in a similar way “I Have Some Question For You” by Rebecca Makkai did. I would love to see Cherry extend her research on vicarious trauma to include other professions who experience similar pain points, like education and medicine, because it is clear to anyone who has experienced trauma that her research is vital.

Thank you to NetGalley, Tamara Cherry, and ECW Press for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review!

As a former journalist who absolutely hated reporting on traumatic events, I greatly appreciated this book. It's hard to peel back those hardened layers and frankly address the ways we have been traumatized and the ways we have contributed to others' trauma – Cherry is commendable for recognizing this and making it happen. This goes far beyond the basic "don't look directly at gory photos" kind of advice we got on trauma in J-school.

I fall into the niche group this book would appeal to as a journalist! I thought it was fascinating and empathetic, just so narrow in its scope it's almost academic...Still, I don't think we can ever have enough experts telling us about the importance of trauma-informed reporting.

I received this book as an ARC from NetGalley.

As a retired EMT, I was really interested to see Cherry's thoughts on how the new handles trauma. Do journalists get as affected as we do from some of the crime scenes they cover. Do they have the resources to help them cope with these tragedies? Thoughts like that went through my head.

The short answer is no. The industry is starting to come to terms with how they cover these stories and how they can do better. This was a very interesting look into this industry.

The Trauma Beat is a compelling but hard-hitting read from former crime reporter Tamara Cherry. She examines the trauma caused by media coverage of crimes to victims, their families, and the journalists involved by seamlessly blending her experiences with research she has carried out since leaving the field of journalism.

While the book focuses on American cases, it’s also relevant to other countries. I'm sure we can all think of times journalists went too far to get the story or over-sensationalised something for the increased coverage, can't we?

The Trauma Beat isn’t explicitly true crime-centred either; it's a much more expansive look at what and whose trauma is deemed newsworthy and why that is.

Through her experience of talking to survivors, victims of crime, and their families, Cherry shows that for many people, dealing with the media meant re-traumatising themselves. And subsequently, this was traumatising for the front-line journalists.

But this doesn't mean that the news shouldn't be made available. It's still crucial that reportage happens, but trauma-informed reporting should be the norm, not the exception.

After all, the subjects of news stories are real people. They are only human and might be living their worst day as their name – or the name of a loved one – made the news.

This book should be essential reading for journalism students and, really, anyone who’s currently working as a journalist. 4⭐

Thank you to NetGalley and ECW Press for the opportunity to read this book in return for an, as always, honest review.

This was a really insightful look into a topic I'd never actually considered before- how reporting on traumatic events in the news affects both the survivors/families and the reporter themselves. I found the author to be incredibly honest in dissecting her own practice as a reporter, highlighting where she had previously gone wrong and the many regrets she has now she is more trauma informed. A really thought-provoking read.

Such a fascinating perspective on trauma, vicarious trauma and how information is gathered and shared. In a society where “trauma porn” and “doom scrolling” are influencing the way in which news is reported, this book could not be more timely. The author provides a respectful analysis of how trauma reporting impacts on those directly affected by the events and this makes for a thought provoking read.

I've been hearing a lot lately about unplugging from the news - about giving yourself a break from the constant barrage of depressing headlines. Even as a journalism major, it hadn't occurred to me that a lot of the trauma connected to reporting these events lands squarely on the journalist. Cherry's insightful book digs into both how traumatic events can impact the journalist who's reporting on it, as well as how it negatively impacts the families, friends, and survivors of those events.

This book made me really think through what is actually appropriate and responsible journalism - it should be included in journalism courses (nothing of this nature was when I was in school for sure!). It really asks the question: how far is too far? Do we really need to hound traumatized people for interviews? Do we need to show murder weapons or crash sites in order to effectively report a story? There is a lot more sensationalism that happens without regard to the impact that these images or videos can have. Additionally, there needs to be a lot more trauma training that goes into being a journalist (both in how to deal with traumatized people and how to recognize the journalist's own symptoms of secondary trauma that can come along with seeing horrible acts of violence or death on a regular basis).

There are a lot of really impactful and interesting stories that Cherry uses to drive her points home. There were some sections that felt a bit repetitive and I would have loved at least one chapter on how viewing these images merely as outsiders (and not intimately connected to the stories) could negatively impact us. This could help make even more of a case for why news reporting needs to be even more trauma-informed. But overall, I'd recommend this book to anyone who's interested in media or journalism.

In The Trauma Beat, Cherry shows how desperately we need to restructure the way we (journalists and people at home) treat traumatic death and events in the media - all the while providing the exact sources and resources that will help in making change stick. She interviews current and prior members of the press, surviving families of those who have died in traumatic events, and at points those who have directly survived the event itself, as well as providing extracts from other trauma-based academic research, to create a thorough, insightful argument for the need to 'rethink the business of bad news' - by no longer seeing it as just business.

What stands out most of all in Cherry's work is that she's making actual suggestions on how journalism can be improved, with evidence on how beneficial these changes would be. Often in work relating directly to trauma and crime studies, a lack of self awareness stops a non-fiction writer from ever suggesting anything that would actually be beneficial for survivors of trauma; survivors are treated as spectacle. In Cherry's work, she shows a passion for protecting and uplifting the voices of those survivors who desperately want to be heard and understood, but also respects those who wish to be left alone, and uses every part of her work to show how we can do better across the board to protect people when reporting on traumatic events.

Cherry discusses her own failings as a journalist, moments where she didn't follow up with surviving families and should have, moments where she forced herself into homes to get the story and perhaps made things worse. She's honest, as are all of the other members of the press in their interviews. It reinforces the need for trauma-conscious journalism, training at the first stages of journalism school and maintaining training throughout. There's also an interesting insight into the trauma responses journalists and photographers also have working for police, newspapers, and independently, who are called in to and bare witness to trauma every day for years with no follow up check on their mental health. Cherry's argument is that trauma-conscious journalism will help not just families and survivors but the people who also front the news we see.

In terms of form and style, there is a certain level of repetitiveness to the chapter structure due to how interviews are integrated, but it's not a massive issue. Cherry is very adept at ensuring that all her bases are covered when reporting on traumatic events without it feeling exploitative or dismissive of any one perspective or story, and while some parts are longer than others, there's always a reasoning behind it, and nothing feels underexplored by the end.

In a world of ignorance, Tamara Cherry and the work she has dedicated herself to feels like a glimpse of hope that things can change for the better.

With THE TRAUMA BEAT, Tamara Cherry tells the stories behind the tragedies and realities of the modern day media approach to shocking events. Covering the survivors of trauma, the ones directly supporting them, their families, and the media itself, Cherry pulls back the curtain of the impact of having one's worst moments recorded for the benefit of reporters, the media, and the curious public. Whether your story makes the news or not, you are invaded and confronted by the bottomless appetites of ambitions, consumption, and the next big thing. My heart ached and my admiration for Cherry's courage and beautiful storytelling of a difficult and necessary examination of what tragic stories are told and how. I received a copy of this book and these opinions are my own, unbiased thoughts.

This is fascinating and also runs parallel to dissections of the business of "true crime" right now as well. I enjoy how much this delves into the ethics of the 24 hour news cycle and think it would make an interesting text to study in both journalism and ethics classes.

I've just finished reading this book and I don't think there's enough space in this text field for all the thoughts I've had. All the feelings I've had. All the notes I stopped reading to take down.

I am not a journalist, nor even working in the media field. And yet, so much of this book speaks to me. It also made me feel A LOT. Like, enough that I needed to employ some trauma-informed principles to my reading of this book.

Choice. I chose to limit my consumption of this book to 1 - 2 chapters at a time. Sometimes I had the bandwidth to read a few chapters at a time over the course of a day. But usually it was just a few at a time so that I could properly read them, appreciate them for what they are, rather than find myself rushing or pulling back because it's too much.

And so much of this book will stay with me. I'll take it forward on my own professional and personal journey towards a trauma-informed approach to my work, to my life. This is so incredibly well done. Bravo to Tamara for asking tough questions, recognizing where mistakes were made, making concrete suggestions for how to mitigate that trauma in the future...

Bravo.

This is a deeply thoughtful work that manages to achieve a fine balance between the personal territory of memoir and the clearly-handled ethical survey of the survivors of violence whose stories were treated in the media which forms the bones of this book. It could easily have been used for a scholarly study into the impact of the media on these survivors in the immediate aftermath and then the longer tail of their individual traumas, and it’s handled with great sensitivity, but it manages to weave this survey structure with individual stories, with the author’s own experience. The latter could have overwhelmed it, too, but somehow the balance is just right - personal enough to keep drawing your eye to the experience of the journalist who engaged in these behaviours, what propelled her then and what haunts her now, but without ever making it feel like her narrative is overwhelming the broader concern of the work or the individual stories of the individuals who give her permission to share their responses. Thoughtful, ethical, clear work — the writing of this book and the questions that came up in the process are also part of the content — and genuinely of importance and interest to both lay readers and journalists.

The Trauma Beat: A Case for Re-Thinking the Business of Bad News by Tamara Cherry is an eye-opening and compelling examination of the trauma caused by media coverage of crimes to victims, their families, and the journalists involved. Cherry is a former crime reporter, so The Trauma Beat blends her experiences with research she has carried out since leaving journalism. It has already changed the way I consume the news and I imagine I'm not the only reader who will be affected by it in this way.

What a powerful book. I am not involved in the media professional but I can totally understand how trauma is part of the profession.
Training is advocated for at all levels, this is reinforced by examples of various professionals.
Pushed by editors to get the sound bite, quote, or interview the trauma is compounded to the survivors and professionals.
We accept trauma in the first responders as part of their professions but media are also running towards not away from horrendous scenes

As a licensed professional counselor who knows all too well the importance of being trauma-informed, I was drawn to Tamara Cherry's "The Trauma Beat" because I was curious about how a journalist would tackle the subject. Cherry does an excellent job of advocating for change in the ways journalists tell stories that involve trauma, but she does so in a way that feels like she is inviting you, the reader, along for the journey, rather than just lecturing you to change. Interspersed throughout the book are vignettes from survivors about what their experience was like in dealing with the media, which provides a humanizing element- how better to illustrate the ways in which things need to change than by sharing examples of how someone got it wrong? Research on trauma also helps to provide legitimacy to what Cherry is saying, as her pleas for others to do better are then more than just her own opinion on the matter.

What I found particularly compelling, however, was the way in which the author shared her own experience, and discussed not only her distress at times that she got it wrong, but how she now uses what she knows to try and get it right. That vulnerability and honesty may not be easy to share, but it will likely help readers really listen to the message being spread throughout the book, and may spur real change. It was also illuminating to read input from other reporters about how their desire to become more trauma-informed has impacted the ways in which they now tell stories, as they see how past mistakes may have further traumatized their interview subjects.

It may seem like a gargantuan task to try and change a system of journalism that is somewhat resistant to that change, but books like this, and professionals in the field who are willing to stand up and demand that we all do better, make that task seem more achievable. After all, if we want to truly change the system, it isn't just the journalists who need to change- the general public, those who consume media, need to be more thoughtful about the media we consume.