by Jock Lauterer
director
the Carolina Community Media Project
Friday, July 27, 2007

I am writing this morning from the NCPA annual convention in Charlotte where today we are hearing from a panel addressing the coverage of the Va. Tech shootings of April 16, 2007.

Titled “Virginia Tech tragedy: New reporting for the new media world,” the session features “journalists and students under fire (who) reported their stories from he inside,” according to the program copy.

DTH General Manager Kevin Schwartz is moderating a panel that includes Bobby Bowman, who was the managing editor of the College Times of Va. Tech on the day of the shooting; Erin France, the lead Daily Tar Heel reporter from UNC-CH; Tim Reese, the DTH lead photographer on the scene; and Dave Scott of the AP.

Introducing the panel, Kevin said, “We weren’t prepared…you can never really be prepared,” citing the other major campus crime events at Chapel Hill over the last ten years: the shooting behind the Post Office and the Pit SUV incident.

NOT ENTIRELY PREPARED

Erin France, an English major from Hertford, recalled how it went down: Watching the TV in the DTH office, they began getting exctited. Erin remembered telling Joe Schwartz, DTH editor: “We should send someone up there! And we should send someone up there today!” exclaimed the 2007 UNC-CH graduate “…how can I get my car….a photographer….and get on the road as quickly as possible..?”

“I started screaming at Tim (photog)…” And a bunch of staffers piled in Erin’s car and took off. “I was screaming so much at everybody…” she recounted. They left Chapel Hill so quickly, the student-reporters departed without a debit card, any extra clothes, only a tank of gas and their youthful enthusiasm.

No other college paper made such an effort, said Schwartz, though some people criticized him, saying, “How could you let them go?” to which Kevin responded: “How could I NOT let them go?”

Erin rejoined, “As state and national editor, I think it’s so much better if we go to the event…wherever the events are going on…We could get there, so why not go?”

NO HELICOPTER JOURNALISM THAT DAY

No aerial photos were taken, said AP’s Dave Scott, because the winds were so high that day no helicopters could fly in for the typical overhead photos we’ve come accustomed to.

“Certainly it was the biggest story I’ve been involved in,” said Scott, who said AP had 40 staffers on the scene, not just reporters, but still and video photographers, multimedia, graphics and interactive online producers…but, “One thing we learned is that those multimedia folks needed to have been there earlier…”

It’s still the biggest story of the year,” he said. “It was on A-1 of every newspaper… It was the first post-Katrina news emergency that we had.”

GOING TOO FAR TO GET THE SHOT

DTH photographer Tim Reese, a junior multimedia major from Asheville, recalled that he had left Chapel Hill so suddenly, he arrived in Blacksburg without any press credentials. Showing slides from his work at Va. Tech.

DTH photographer Reese said it saddened him to see how other news crews literaly “chase grieving students” to get the photo. Reese himself either used a long lens or introduced himself and got permission, he told us.
Reese described one instance where he saw a young man in tears, thought about taking the photo but then decided against it — and within minutes the crying student was surrounded by a crowd of 35 or so photographers hitting with him flash and strobes. Reese said, “It was the most sickening thing to see…”

WHAT DID THEY LEARN?

That was the question posed by Kevin Schwartz to the panel. AP’s Scott said, “You need your specialists there ont he ground from the start…and have people prepared to go quickly. You need a duffle bag packed and ready in the closet…many of our people now how ‘hurricane kits.’”

Reese, who arrived in Blacksburg in only the clothes he was wearing, agreed with the need to be better prepared. “I now have a bag packed,” he said.

France commented, “I absolutely loved my experience. It cemented my love for journalism. It taught me that I’m really good in a crisis situation…it taught me I have a passion for the job.”

Va. Tech’s Bowman got a chuckle from the journalists assembed when he responded: “Call mom early…that was the second call I made after I called a reporter, and she still thanks me for that.” Then he added he learned the “importance of talking to counselors…to realize you’re reporting on the story, but that you need to talk to someone too.”

Explaining what it was like to be a student/reporter so close to the people and the scene at the time, Bowman conceded, “It was insanely difficult. There were so many reporters (from the College Times) that we just sent home because they were too close to it…we got down to a staff of 12.”

MOVING ON

Schwartz complimented the College Times for dealing with grace and hospitality as the national press descending on their campus “in the most rude and uncaring fashion…”

The Va. Tech editor concluded, “We looking forward to the day that we can publish a newspaper that doesn’t have anything in it about the shooting…there’s enough other news going on in Blacksburg.”