With the news of what happened, why it happened, who to blame and my own circle of friends wondering why the media has latched onto the shooters immigrant status (is this relevant in anyway? That’s like saying he liked hats.), it’s easy to see how some angles of the story have been overlooked.
Thanks to Ryan for bringing my attention to this story on the Virginia Tech student paper and the editors, writers and photographers that put aside their grief and stepped up like professionals to do the job they set out to do.
It reminds me of my own experience as Executive Editor of my college paper in 2001. We had only been in school 2 weeks and our first issue was to come out soon when we woke up to the news that two planes had crashed into the World Trade Center.
We scrapped our finalized paper and scrambled our staff about the campus to get the story out and overnight came up with the completely reworked edition. When the issue was in the boxes around campus a funny thing happened. Many of us started to feel the pain and hurt that everyone else was already feeling. It was as if we had all put it aside and became focused on our task. I imagine the students at Virginia Tech’s student paper are experiencing much of the same.
Bravo to The Roanoke Times for digging up an angle on the story that no one else is seeing (and if you are reading this Roanoke Times, take a look at Not Just a Number and The Crossing and make it happen on your website). And I applaud these student journalists for having the fortitude, commitment and willpower to keep going.
