News coverage of Va. Tech
My newspaper column
Related posts: here, here and here.
I don't know about you, but I first read about the horror at Virginia Tech online. My wife saw it on television. One of our daughters heard about it from a text message on her phone. The other daughter saw it on Facebook.
I mention this because it shows clearly how the news business has exploded. No longer do a few news sources control or have the responsibility for news reporting. Everyone can do it. Dissemination of information now occurs through newspapers, television, news Web sites, personal blogs, cell phone video and mobile alerts, to name just a half dozen.
As a result, the news cycle never ends. Because it runs 24/7, the market and appetite for news satiates faster than ever.
I, for one, have found that I fill up quickly. When the menu is Anna Nicole's baby or Britney's haircut, I can bypass it without a second thought. The newspaper does little with such light-weight tabloid stories because we don't consider them news.
But a tragedy like what happened at Virginia Tech falls into a category of its own.
Virginia Tech is only three hours from Greensboro and the Hokie Nation is well represented in the Triad. For us, it was a local story and we tried to treat it that way.
Unlike many stories, this one has been reported nationwide almost in real-time. News conferences were televised live. Students posted messages on MySpace and their own blogs. Newspaper and television reporters got as much information from those sources as they did from traditional ones. The prevailing video on Monday was shot by a student with a cell phone.
Similarly, I first learned about the anger students felt about not being notified of the first murder Monday morning through comments they made on a story at PlanetBlacksburg.com.
Consequently, each day last week, editors here tried to balance what we thought readers wanted to know and what they already knew.
On our front page Thursday, we published a photo from inside a Blacksburg restaurant that showed a video clip of Cho Seung-Hui on a big-screen television holding pistols. We heard from some readers who thought we were glorifying Cho, sensationalizing the story, encouraging copy cats, and disrespecting victims and survivors.
I respect these concerns, and I agree with them in many respects. There’s no question that the images of the deranged killer were disturbing. Personally, I had grown so weary of seeing different photos and hearing about the mass murderer on television by Thursday that I stopped watching.
So I understand those who didn't care for that picture on their newspaper front page.
For those of us in the news business, the release of the video was not only the big news of the day, but it helped to answer the one remaining question about the mass murder: What was going through his mind? His video told us. It was offensive and uncomfortable to watch. Unfortunately, that’s the way news happens sometimes.
Even after the shock wears off, it's raw and painful. The underlying fear is that Cho's act reveals an evil that exists among us that can erupt anywhere at any time.
As someone said to me once, there are days in which the newspaper should only be read by adults. This was a week full of them.
Comments (12)
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John, I opened my N&R this am and saw the strip across the top of paper and thought the newsboy messed up and gave me one of the NY tabloids, when I read the gratuitious, grusome headline: "I wonder if I'll die slow or fast".
Obviously this has nothing to do with news and is kind of hard to reconcile with the semi-aplogetic tone in your post above.
Posted on April 22, 2007 7:46 PM
Boy, that brought some good discussion, huh?
Posted on April 24, 2007 11:15 AM
Sorry, Skeet. Your first comment seemed to be a standalone statement. I'm pretty sure that that person's quote wasn't gratuitous. I'm also pretty sure that in the context of 32 people being gunned down, that statement isn't gratuitous.
If the tone of the post seems "semi-apologetic," it is because the news is so tough sometimes, not because I'm apologizing for our coverage last week.
Posted on April 24, 2007 1:50 PM
Too many newspapers have designers rather than editors making these decisions, and that's why there were so many problems at so many different places last week.
Until those issues are corrected, the problems will continue.
Posted on April 24, 2007 2:08 PM
Not sure what you're referencing when you say "so many problems at so many different places," Wenalway. Editors made our play and photo decisions.
Posted on April 24, 2007 2:51 PM
Thank you, John. And Wenalway's explanation also makes sense
Ah, I apparently have an apology to make. Here I've been inappropriately blaming Allen Johnson all along for his patented non-responses, and now I see what I was blaming on plain old lack of response and/ or courtesy when someone catches you in an obvious inconsistency (not that we don't all have them-and really-is that great a sin?)is apparently just N&R ethos of spontaneously declaring "stand-aloneness" of somebody's post.
I stand educated and I'll try to be less critical and expectant of a reply in the future.
I remain, very truly yours
Skeet Club Savage
Posted on April 24, 2007 3:01 PM
No N&R ethos; just mine. Your comment just seemed to be an expression of your opinion to my column, which is fine, but it didn't appear to me to be something I needed to respond to. Obviously, my mistake.
Posted on April 24, 2007 3:04 PM
John:
I realize editors' knee-jerk response is to defend the design-based approach. I'll be nice and call that passive.
But if you are unaware of some of the other problems, perhaps you need to take a more in-depth look at some of the other newspapers.
Posted on April 24, 2007 11:02 PM
I know what problems you are talking about, and I can tell you that those problems are more symptomatic of the news cycle and time crunch than any design-based approach. We are constantly trying to spin the news forward and present the freshest material for our readers -- when something like this happens, we only have hours to make that happen. Some of the papers around the country made decisions about headlines and such that might not have been made given more time to think about it.
And as for designers making decisions and letting the design dictate the page, I can assure you, as a designer, that doesn't happen. Designs morph throughout the night to accommodate stories, headlines that need more words to get the point across accurately, etc. We work together with the editors and reporters and copy editors to put out the best paper we can in the time we have to do it -- and believe it or not, we're much too busy just trying to get the paper out to have any liberal/design/conservative/etc. agenda.
Posted on April 26, 2007 5:16 PM
As much as that may be true in isolated instances, I doubt it's the approach in most places.
Posted on April 27, 2007 11:34 AM
I know who you are now -- I've seen your comments over at newspagedesigner.com. Wordhawk or something like that? I won't bother defending design and its role in a newspaper to you again -- I've read your arguments over there and am aware of your inability to listen to others' arguments, so there's really no point.
Posted on April 27, 2007 4:44 PM
The only inability is the design camp's refusal to look at the reality of what happens on a small or large scale.
Again, the readers have responded on this one. I find it amusing that for almost any other issue, a newspaper can be swayed by a comment from even one reader. But when it comes to the design-based approach, nothing changes.
Again, the nice way to say it is too many editors are passive about that approach.
Posted on April 28, 2007 5:34 PM