The Media Resilience Network

A Week of Conversations on Journalist Wellbeing, Storytelling, and Collective Resilience

The Media Resilience Network along side our parent organization, Vita Activa Org, hosted a three-day public event series at Stanford University from May 26–28, 2026.

Our Three-day program brought together journalists, filmmakers, scholars, students, and media leaders for community dialogue, live storytelling, and documentary film. Held at The Nitery Theater at Stanford University, the series convened journalists, freelancers, editors, producers, filmmakers, students, scholars, and community members for conversations and artistic programming focused on emotional resilience, trauma-informed care, storytelling, and collective wellbeing in journalism and public life.

These events respond to increasing awareness of the emotional and psychological impact carried by journalists and media workers covering conflict, migration, disasters, political violence, and human suffering.

“Journalists are often expected to witness trauma without space to process its emotional consequences,” said Dr. Luisa Ortiz Pérez, co-founder of MDRnet. “This gathering creates space for reflection, care, and connection, reminding media workers that they do not have to carry these experiences alone.”

Bay Area Community Gathering 

The program began on Tuesday, May 26, with a guided community meeting for journalists and media workers across the Bay Area. The facilitated gathering offered a structured, confidential, peer-supported environment where participants can reflect on trauma, grief, burnout, and the emotional realities of newsroom and field reporting. The session was designed as a community support space and is not therapy.

“Being a journalist is part of my identity, forever”.

Participants in the gathering shared common trauma stored in their bodies connected to

• Post traumatic stress related to climate disasters
• Strain related to conscientious change management
• Overcoming the weight of a longstanding career
• Finding it hard to adapt to the realities of not being in the newsroom anymore
• Making the most of a sabbatical out or corporate and thinking of a career back/away from journalism
• Human/biological limits of the relentless race to keep journalism sustainable

We learned that economic, financial and career management education is essential. That separating the personal from the professional is key and learning how to do that.

“Newsrooms used to be collective and the responsibility was shared, the AI machine is now dividing us. We are islands”.

We concluded that this was time radical collaboration. Slowing down, concentrating on slow journalism. Doing less with less to avoid energy depletion. Allegiance with labor is essential.

A Human Condition. A LiveStorytelling Journalism Performance

It all started with a workshop series designed for journalists, freelancers, reporters, and media leaders based in Northern California, interested in exploring and performing personal narratives as a path toward professional growth and emotional resilience.

Through guided sessions, participants developed and refined their stories, learning how lived experience can deepen reporting, strengthen voice, and build connection with audiences.

They were trained on Empathetic Interviews & Building Your Narrative, Emotional Management & Positive Narratives, Live Storytelling cardinal rules and Psychological First Aid. 

Our 6 participants wrote stories based on their emotional experiences as journalists and rehearsed online, in person and at the venue ti ensure they felt comfortable, cared for and ready to care their stories live.

The workshop culminated in a Live Storytelling Performance at The Nitery Theater at Stanford University on Wednesday, May 27, 2026 at 7:00 PM, where participants shared their stories on stage.

There is something uniquely powerful about storytelling in a live setting, the immediacy, vulnerability, and shared human connection transform stories into unforgettable experiences, both for the teller and the audience.

This was the program of an evening curated by Luisa Ortiz Pérez and María Zurita Ontiveros and MCed by Joe Ruiz 

Stories shared:

Our Program

Juntas Somos Fuertes/Stronger Together

The final event on Thursday, May 28, featured a special screening and conversation  around the documentary Juntas Somos Fuertes / Stronger Together by Mexican filmmaker Tania Claudia Castillo. The film examines the awakening of feminist consciousness in Mexico through the life and work of lesbian feminist activist Yan María Castro and highlights struggles for dignity, solidarity, and women’s rights.

Following the screening, audience members joined a conversation with the film maker, Tania Claudia Castillo, MFA Student in Documentary Film at Stanford, 

María Zurita Ontiveros, PhD Student in Theater Studies at Stanford and Dr. Luisa Ortiz Pérez, Vita Activa / MDRnet.org

Conclusion

At a time when many journalists are navigating uncertainty, isolation, and extraordinary pressures, these three days offered something increasingly rare: space to pause, connect, and remember that none of us does this work alone. The stories shared, the questions raised, and the community built throughout the week reinforced the importance of creating cultures of care in journalism. We are grateful to everyone who joined us and look forward to carrying this momentum into future gatherings, collaborations, and acts of collective resilience.

Immense gratitude to Joe Ruiz for being a copilot in this adventure, Gisel Sánchez and Julia Foti for the Comms and Design, Dagmar Thiel, LuAn Méndez and Stephanie Pita for supporting the Storytelling Workshop, Kae Petrin, Emily Canto Nunes, Mark Adams, Sydney Fishman for their courage and storytelling skill, to Catchlight and Jenny Stratton for the partnership, images and their trust in us. Thank you María Zurita Ontiveros for being a chingona siempre, to Tania Claudia Castillo, for her art, her eye and her bravery, to Diane Sylvester for saving the day always!, to the JSK community fellows, affiliates, alumni and staff for their faith in a better journalism.

This week would not have been possible without the support of María Zurita Ontiveros CoArtistic Director at the Nitery Experimental Theater, MDRnet and Vita Activa Staff, Press Forward and our beloved families 💜

About MDRnet

The Media Resilience Network (MDRnet.org) is a Press Forward funded initiative by Vita Activa that provides free and confidential mental health crisis support to journalists and media leaders in the United States. MDRnet works to strengthen emotional resilience, peer support, and trauma-informed approaches within journalism and media communities.

Find us at hello@mdrnet.org | +1973-626-7394 or @GetHelp.11 (Signal)

About Vita Activa

Vita-Activa.org is a helpline for journalists, activists, human rights defenders, women and LGBTTIQ+ people facing online gender-based violence, stress, anxiety, chronic fatigue, trauma, and grief. Our services in Spanish, Portuguese, English and Arabic, are free, confidential and anonymous. Vita Activa provides peer support, psychological and digital first aid, holistic crisis management, and strategic decision-making to people over 18 yo. Find us at apoyo@vita-activa.org (Spanish) and support@vita-activa.org  (English) | @VitaActivaOrg | +56 9 3291 9018 (Whatsapp, Signal)