From trauma to teaching: Philly gun violence survivors are rewriting how gun violence gets covered

This is the second in a two-part series about Philadelphia’s role in shaping gun violence reporting across the country. The first installment focused on the rising awareness of gun violence as a public health issue. This second installment highlights survivor and journalist voices and collaboration. 

Keeping community at the center 

Central to the idea of a solutions-based approach to gun violence reporting is keeping the people and communities affected at the center of coverage. 

Oronde McClain was only 10 years old when he was shot in the head while waiting for a SEPTA bus in East Mount Airy, leaving him critically injured and in a coma for seven weeks. 

His struggle with trauma and journey of healing has been long and hard, but has also informed his work now as one of Philly’s leading advocates for gun violence survivors and role as the Philadelphia Center for Gun Violence Reporting’s Survivor Connection director. 

Finding this purpose began at 13, when his grandmother asked him to speak at a church service to update neighbors on how he was doing after three years of recovery, which included 23 attempts at suicide, re-learning how to walk and talk, and how to write with his left hand. 

“And I stood up out of the wheelchair and I did it. And I was like, ‘This feels good.’ Everybody’s clapping and everything and I’m like, ‘You know what? This can be a thing for me,’” he told NBC10 in 2023.

Since then, McClain earned a bachelor’s degree in criminal behavior, wrote a book titled “PTSD Won’t Define Me,” and began working as a community advocate for gun violence victims, founding the McClain Foundation, to provide support and resources for those directly impacted.

“You have all these institutions. All these nonprofits. But it’s nothing for survivors,” he said. “So when I got out of the hospital, they said, ‘OK, you’re better now. Let’s go.’ And it’s like, I’m really not better.” 

Part of his advocacy included ensuring that support for victims also came from the news media, who, he says, are “just trying to do their job,” but who often re-traumatize people in the process. 

This is what brought him to PCGVR as newsroom liaison, co-producer of the recently released documentary, titled “The Second Trauma, and now director of their new community-experts-journalist directory, Survivor Connection. 

At the PCGVR conference last month, McClain led a group of survivors and family members in a panel speaking about what it’s like to experience first-hand the sudden and often intrusive or blundering arrival of journalists in their lives, homes and communities. 

Panelists included Prof. Yvonne Latty, director of the Logan Center for Urban Investigative Reporting at Temple University and producer and director of “The Second Trauma”; Angela Wade, whose son Joseph Daniels III was killed in 2019; and Armond James, whose brother Anrae James was murdered while working at Jefferson University Hospital in 2021. 

Their conversation was described by many attendees as a highlight of the conference, providing insight into how news coverage too often dehumanizes victims, survivors and local communities as afterthoughts to a narrative — but also how journalists are pressured to get sound bites, quickly, from officials instead of taking time to dive more deeply with residents. 

“You as a journalist are human beings and have to act as one, too,” said Latty. “None of us are really objective. Who you choose to interview tends to be who you’re comfortable with … Never tell students, ‘Don’t be empathetic.’ These are people. Approach them with humanity and you’ll get it back.” 

To help foster that collaboration, McClain and PCGVR have launched Survivor Connection, a directory of survivors who are willing and trained to work with journalists. 

When it launched in February 2025, 90 lived-experience experts (survivors and co-victims included) had already received training in media literacy, trauma and public health solutions to gun violence. That number has since grown to more than 150.

“We have to bridge the gap between media and survivors and the community. We have to work together. If we work together, we are unstoppable,” said McClain, who noted that while his work is rewarding and galvanizing, he hopes to be “put out of business so I don’t have to do this anymore.” 

Next up for McClain is a Nov. 21 workshop to bring survivors and community victims together with journalists, then a film screening tour for “Second Trauma” that will be shared through colleges and local news outlets around the country.

“I’m not an activist,” he added. “I’m just Oronde trying to bring change to the community, and now to the world.”

A national narrative

Getting journalist buy-in to this increased training and communication will now also be easier, thanks to the launch of the Association of Gun Violence Reporters (AGVR), led by co-directors Sammy Caiola and Abené Clayton. 

Caiola, a West Philly resident who was WHYY’s first gun violence prevention reporter and now works at Chalkbeat Philadelphia, explained “there are still very few dedicated gun violence reporters in America. It’s not like [healthcare or environmental journalism] which are more common beats in newsrooms, so it makes sense that those professional organizations exist. Gun violence reporting has been a slow-growing movement since 2020 or so.” 

AGVR’s launch comes at a time when “pretty much every journalist is going to be a gun violence reporter sooner or later,” as MacMillan told Billy Penn when asked why he and PCGVR felt it was important to help get the professional organization off the ground, with help from national groups like Fund for Safer Futures and the California Wellness Foundation.

“Whether you work in education or business or sports, there’s no aspect or part of American life that isn’t touched by gun violence,” he explained. “We constantly hear from journalists who are hurled into a scenario they are not prepared for.” 

The hope is for AGVR to serve as a resource for practical training as well as peer support and trauma/mental health support, in addition to being a space to create reporting guidelines and tools going forward. 

“Covering gun violence — whether that is community shootings or active shooters or firearm suicide — can feel really isolated and really hopeless,” explained Caiola. “Guns are an enormous presence in America. It’s hard to feel like any journalism you do will make a difference. The combination of covering traumatic content and speaking with people and meeting deadlines can leave you feeling really drained.” 

For co-director Abené Clayton, who is lead reporter on the “Guns and Lies in America” series for The Guardian, AGVR was a natural progression and “I felt like this sort of organization needed to exist for a while.” 

“The camaraderie helps you sustain yourself doing this extremely hard work,” she said.

“If you go to other journalism conferences, there would sometimes be other sessions on guns for healthcare journalists, investigative reporters, etc.,” noted Clayton. “But to have something specific to what we do makes sense, and we need other people to talk to about it who understand what you’re going through.”

Clayton notes that guns often play a role in everyday news stories that are not high-profile shootings, and that “covering topics and meeting with community groups in the moments in-between makes reporting much better.” 

“Reporters are taught to have this firewall between us and the communities we interact with and cover, and it doesn’t do us any good or them any good,” she added. “We all live in the same place. There’s a way to create a more positive feedback loop where community members can understand how reporters work, and we can listen and understand going about certain ways we might not be helpful.” 

Examples of what is not helpful include relying on law enforcement for information while not reaching out to community groups, simply because they are easier to get in touch with, as well as audiences getting their news from Instagram or TikTok. 

“Content will be from a traditional news site or news affiliate or newspaper, but the way it’s getting to people is through social media. You see and read the comments, which adds another layer to the politicization,” Clayton said. “So you see stereotypes spread. It’s a double-edged sword because having that access to information is important.” 

Through workshops, social events and general collaboration, AGVR’s volunteer leaders are “hoping to connect anyone who works on covering gun violence across the country” and share best practices and decompress or vent. 

“To have somebody on your team and on your side when you might be the only person in the newsroom that’s buried in this topic that can feel so overwhelming,” Caiola said. 

Upcoming events include a free webinar on Nov. 17 with Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. Austin Davis, Caiola, Dr. Beard, and McClain on “Centering Survivors in Gun Violence Reporting,” and McClain’s Nov. 21 Survivor Connection workshop to bring gun violence survivors together with journalists. 

This story is a part of Every Voice, Every Vote, a collaborative project managed by The Lenfest Institute for Journalism. The William Penn Foundation provides lead support for Every Voice, Every Vote in 2024 and 2025 with additional funding from The Lenfest Institute for Journalism, Comcast NBC Universal, The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Henry L. Kimelman Family Foundation, Judy and Peter Leone, Arctos Foundation, Wyncote Foundation, 25th Century Foundation, and Dolfinger-McMahon Foundation.

To learn more about the project and view a full list of supporters, visit www.everyvoice-everyvote.org. Editorial content is created independently of the project’s donors.

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