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How did your paper handle the Virginia Tech shootings

Discussion in 'Journalism topics only' started by Mr. X, Apr 17, 2007.

  1. Mr. X

    Mr. X Active Member

    Time for the latest in this series.

    Was there anyone out there working on a daily who did not make this the top story? (It is possible some hyper-local publications did not.) Unless it gives away what your publication was, what was your headline?

    What staff-written stories did you have? What kind of columns did you have? Were there any editorials? Did they call for tougher gun control laws? Did any support the right to carry guns, which Texas adopted following the Luby's cafeteria shootings? Were there any sports-related stories?

    What could your paper have done to cover this better on the first day?

    I cannot answer any of these questions for me because my fulltime job is with a nonprint daily organization covering local news and I work parttime for a weekly, which only prints stories about our rather limited coverage area.
     
  2. Jim Tom Pinch

    Jim Tom Pinch Active Member

    Looking at newseum. Very few publications didn't have it as the top story. A couple more didn't have it above the fold. I didn't look through all, but maybe two just had skybox teasers to inside coverage with no front coverage.
     
  3. HejiraHenry

    HejiraHenry Well-Known Member

    We're hyperlocal for our corner of northeast Mississippi ... with what I have come to call the "9/11 exception" for huge national stories.

    In this case, though, our readership area included, remarkably, a handful of young people in school at VTU.

    So it went six wide at the top.

    We are also covering the preacher murder case in Tennessee and we got that above the fold, barely.
     
  4. Willie-Butch

    Willie-Butch Member

    If you're going to abbreviate, it's VT, not VTU.
     
  5. Shaggy

    Shaggy Guest

    1A, top, centerpiece, all that. We had a story under it with reaction from the local university of similar size, and another one catching up with locals who go to school there.
     
  6. Bob Slydell

    Bob Slydell Active Member

    centerpiece with some local reactions from people with VTU ties.
     
  7. HejiraHenry

    HejiraHenry Well-Known Member

    Noted. Just like on the side of the football helmet.
     
  8. budcrew08

    budcrew08 Active Member

    We had the same thing, except that our local school is a tenth of VT's size.
     
  9. Willie-Butch

    Willie-Butch Member

    It was 4:30 p.m. before our crack news reporter thought to work on an angle about the local college. Brilliant.
     
  10. Cosmo

    Cosmo Well-Known Member

    We're 90 miles from Tech, so I assume our coverage was a bit thorough than most. Six pages with several local stories from Blacksburg and in town here. Plus a big blowup story in sports that was remarkably well written (no, not by me).
     
  11. John

    John Well-Known Member

    What was the sports story about ... other than the obvious?
     
  12. Cosmo

    Cosmo Well-Known Member

    One of our local kids who is a cross country runner at Tech was at Norris when it happened. Just a solid first person account that really made the story sing.
     
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