On January 30, 2023, New Jersey’s Rutgers University professor and independent journalist Catherine Eileen Otten conducted a workshop at the college on gender-based violence.

The workshop covered broadly two theme—the need for survivor-centred reporting practices while covering gender-based violence, and solutions-based journalism that could highlight positive responses to such violence.

In terms of sexual violence, this extended to explaining the context and the lasting repercussions on the survivor. “Ultimately, from a journalistic point of view, it is about recognising survivors’ agency and relaying the infinite range of their suffering, their experiences and their perspectives,” she said.

Otten, who is also the author of the 2017 book With Ashes on their Faces: Yezidi Woman and the Islamic State, pointed out that solutions-based journalism should not be mistaken either for opinion-based journalism or journalistic acitivism. The idea is to expose everyday people to stories that help them understand problems and challenges, and bringing forth work based on solutions that have evolved within communities to show potential ways to respond.

ACJ adjunct professor Uma Vangal pointed out that it was not the job of the journalists to provide solution. “But what we can, and need to do, is to illuminate change that is already happening in small ways,” she said.

Prof Otten also took the students through what she called trauma journalism, focusing primarily on techniques for conducting interviews with gender violence survivors in a way that would not re-traumatise them.

The workshop also included the screening of a TED by Indian photojournalist Smita Sharma on ‘Powerful photos that honour the lives of overlooked women’