Diana Smith, executive editor of Reed Brennan Media Associates, is the 2007-08 co-vice chair of The American Editor Committee.
COVERING A NEWS EVENT OF THE PROPORTION of the Virginia Tech shootings was demanding for seasoned local and national media. Yet, the young student journalists at the university rose admirably to the challenge, said Kelly Furnas, adviser to Virginia Tech’s student media.
In some cases, the students outdistanced big media companies’ response with technology and investigative techniques. “I think they did a really good job,” Furnas said.
Students scrambled with computers, cell phones and other handheld communication devices to gather and distribute information as fast as possible, with the first focus on two student-run Web sites — one for the Collegiate Times and the other for Planet Blacksburg. The college newspaper’s Web site initially crashed from the number of hits from people frantically seeking information, but was quickly restored on another server.
Furnas says he was impressed most by the students’ compassionate focus on their university community. “They weren’t so concerned about pinpointing blame or making big headlines. They were asking, ‘What is best for our readers?’”
The students’ most important early mission was to identify the victims. “For a while there, The New York Times was linking to the Collegiate Times Web site,” Furnas said.
Furnas said he also was impressed by the newspaper editors’ intense discussions and thoughtful decisions about what they should publish, especially in regard to the shooter’s photo.
“It went back to the readers. In the final decision, it was ‘We do not want our readers walking by every single news rack on campus and seeing the shooter’s face there,’” he said. “It was something they really struggled with — how do you present hard-hitting, investigative, even critical articles, knowing that you have to take care of a community that is very close-knit?”
The student reporters and editors were thrust abruptly into a situation in which they had to learn how to interview friends and families of the shooting victims. They witnessed details of a stunning tragedy that directly affected them and the people they knew. “This isn’t something any human should have to go through,” Furnas said. Kevin Sterne, a student who worked as chief engineer for WUVT radio was one of those shot and critically injured that morning.
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ALAN KIM | THE ROANOKE (VA.) TIMES
Kevin Sterne, a senior engineering major, since has recovered from injuries sustained in the attack. The photo of him being carried from Norris Hall by four officers is one of the most widely remembered images of the shootings. Sterne, an Eagle Scout, had wrapped a cord around his leg, where he had been shot twice. The move slowed the bleeding and may have saved his life. |
“The radio station stayed pretty independent from what the newspaper was doing. They did a spectacular job of keeping everyone up to date with what we knew at the time,” said Furnas.
While the radio station worked on broadcast updates, the TV station helped to provide content for the Collegiate Times’ Web site. VTTV also snagged some of the earliest broadcast footage of the campus in lockdown as loudspeaker announcements warned students to remain where they were while armed officers rushed across campus in search of the gunman.
Dramatic film footage of the shootings also was captured by student Jamal Albarghouti on a cell phone and relayed by CNN News.
Albarghouti said he was walking across campus for a meeting with his adviser when he heard shouts and saw the area swarmed by police officers. He got down on the ground as ordered and then pulled out his cell phone to shoot the video, capturing scenes of officers with guns drawn and multiple shots being fired.
Meanwhile, a group of student journalists trapped in a classroom when the campus went into lock down immediately began filing stories to Planet Blacksburg and used the Web site Facebook to track down information about the shooting victims.
“Once we became aware the shootings happened on the second floor of Norris, a student went on the university Web site and started looking for classes that were scheduled in Norris at 9:05,” Tricia Sangalang wrote in “April 16th: Virginia Tech Remembers.”
“I wrote down each class, logged in on Facebook.com and added each course as one of my own. Doing so would allow me to click on the course and bring up students who added the course on their profiles. Each click brought up many results, but many students made their profiles limited or private, not allowing people who they weren’t ‘friends’ with to view them. The few I could access, however, luckily had their screen names on their contact information. I instant-messaged a few. Some responded; some said they would rather not answer any questions. One student was more than willing to tell me his story: computer engineering major Ruiqi Zhang. I spoke with Zhang for maybe 20 minutes, and he explained how the students pushed a table in front of the door to block the shooter from entering, expressing his feelings and thoughts during the chaos. ‘He put two shots through the door,’ he said, explaining how the shooter tried to shoulder his way into the room but could not. I froze. As a reporter, I needed the information. As a student, as a person, I was just as scared and overstrung as anyone else, but I knew I needed to keep calm.”
Some of the earliest reporting by the students is used in a recently published book about the tragedy: “April 16th: Virginia Tech Remembers” (Plume Books: $14).
Described as a “gripping, emotional account of the worst school shooting in United States history,” the book is an oral history edited by a journalism professor and written by seven staff writers for Planet Blacksburg and the Collegiate Times.
Roland Lazenby, who has taught journalism at Virginia Tech for eight years, has said that he and the journalism students felt compelled to write the book as a memorial to the 32 victims. The book also describes the intense media coverage that immediately followed and the resilience of the Virginia Tech community throughout the ordeal.
The seven students who led the writing efforts were Kevin Cupp, Suzanne Higgs, Omar Maglalang, Laura Massey, Courtney Thomas, Neal Turnage and Tricia Sangalang.
Not everyone has applauded the book. Some have felt that it was too soon to write about the tragedy. Lazenby has said profits of the book would go to support the families of the victims and scholarships for the students who worked on it.
The book’s genesis took place in the events that unfolded immediately after the shootings. The campus went into lock down, and a group of journalism students in a nearby building immediately began to transmit stories and updates to the Web site, PlanetBlacksburg.com, which Lazenby had helped start a year before.
“In a few minutes, that classroom, that computer lab, became a newsroom. Students were interviewing other students, others were calling friends they could get in contact with. … We wanted information,” writes Sangalang, a media writing student.
Later, Lazenby and the students would expand on that material and solicited other first-person accounts by e-mail. *
This report includes information from CNN News, CBC News, The Roanoke (Va.) Times and excerpts provided by Plume books.