Since 2017, I’ve led weeklong writing seminars for The War Horse. We help veterans, service members and their families tell their stories in their own words. The people who come to our seminars are not professional writers. They arrive carrying experiences most newsrooms want to cover but rarely know how to access in a trauma-informed, community-driven way.
Instead of the newsroom interviewing veterans and their families about war or military policy, we invite them to become authors, not sources. We trust them to be the experts of their own lives.
This changes the nature of the storytelling. The stories are intimate. They challenge assumptions. They cross political lines in ways that traditional reporting often cannot. They have reached readers all over the world. And the impact goes deeper than the page.
What newsrooms can gain from this approach
Personal narrative is often treated as supplemental. But in communities where trust in institutions is frayed, and where people don’t see their lives reflected in traditional reporting, personal narrative can be transformational.
The lessons we’ve learned from nearly a decade of this work apply well beyond military communities:
- Deeper access to hard-to-reach communities. People who have lived through trauma or institutional harm are often hesitant to engage with journalists. But with trusted facilitators and clear ethical boundaries, many will share experiences they’ve never said aloud before.
- A more diverse pipeline of voices. Our seminars bring people into journalism who have never seen themselves as writers. This strengthens coverage and expands who newsrooms consider credible narrators.
- Stronger community relationships. When people feel that journalism is with them, not “about” them, they become more willing to participate, collaborate and stay engaged.
What this work requires
It would be dishonest not to acknowledge the challenges. This work is slow, emotional and requires a trauma-informed approach rooted in consent, choice and respect. Many participants arrive with a distrust of media.
Here are some practices we’ve adopted to address these challenges:
- Build trust long before publication. Our seminars prioritize psychological safety. No one is pressured to share or edited into someone they’re not.
- Honor the storyteller’s authority. Participants maintain creative control. Editors shape the piece, but the voice remains theirs.
- Recognize the emotional labor. We prepare facilitators for the realities of trauma-related writing and encourage boundaries and aftercare.
- Pay people for their work. Compensation signals that their experiences are valued and that journalism benefits from their contribution.
Every writing seminar I’ve ever taught has a moment when someone reads their story aloud for the first time. When people realize their story matters, something fundamental changes. And the public conversation shifts in ways that strengthen communities and journalism.
When newsrooms invest in helping communities tell their own stories, they’re not just improving their coverage — they’re rebuilding trust, widening access and ensuring that the people most affected by the issues we report on can shape the story from the inside.
David Chrisinger is the director of writing seminars for The War Horse and leads the Harris Writing Workshop at the University of Chicago, where he teaches trauma-informed narrative and effective public policy communication. Read his full essay here.
