How do you prepare young journalists for the messy, sometimes traumatic realities of covering stories in the real world? There has to be a better way than leaving them to find out for themselves, with the damage that can cause them and those they encounter in the process.

The Dart Centre's Educators' Day in London in mid June, featured a practical approach that has been pioneered in the States. Tudor Lomas describes the scene:

Four focussed actors, in a roomful of people, reliving the immediate aftermath of a tower-block fire. Three teams of journalism students moving from 'victim' to 'victim' gathering information and facing the personal choice of getting the story or helping the shocked and grieving survivors. Two dozen of us journalism educators observing, getting in the way and generally adding to the atmosphere of panic and confusion. The whole intricate exercise choreographed and moderated by experts from the Dart Centre.

This was the first attempt of its kind in the UK to show how you might be able to train and prepare journalists for covering violence and interviewing those who'd lived through it. It was certainly a powerful experience for everyone involved—"emotionally draining", according to the students and the actors. The organisers call it 'interactive drama' rather than role playing, to make clear that it's professional and meticulously planned and fully rehearsed. It forms the centre-piece of a course taught at the University of Washington in Seattle, by Professor Roger Simpson, one of the world's leading experts on trauma and journalism and the Dart Centre's executive director.

During the morning, Professor Simpson had prepared the ground, issuing 'consumer warnings' about the dangers of working with raw emotions—people can break down during these simulations, tears are normal, you must have done your homework. Journalists should not be learning these lessons on the job, certainly not when the real victims of trauma can be damaged again by insensitive reporting and incompetent interviewing. That's why such workshops are important, to teach the kind of 'emotional intelligence' that enables experienced reporters to move around the everyday battle-fields of life without causing too much additional harm.

It was a good introduction, making very real the media's various duties of care when in the presence of trauma. More would probably have been learned if the journalism students had also had to write news stories based on their interviews (though that would have taken much longer). This would also have highlighted their responsibility in handling the interview material they had collected from victims who may not always be able to judge what to say and what not to say to a journalist—the issue of appropriate reporting.

The next steps are with the two dozen or so educators, from some of the UK's leading schools of journalism and the training departments of big media organisations. They've been shown, in practical detail, how to introduce such teaching to their own trainee journalists; they've discussed the benefits and the costs; and they've seen how the whole process stimulates thinking and discussion about the role and responsibilities of good journalists.