How the UCSB student papers covered (or didn't cover) the killings

http://jimromenesko.com/2014/05/27/uc-santa-barbara-newspaper-explains-why-it-didnt-cover-the-isla-vista-rampage/

The Daily Nexus, the independent student-run paper, was all over it from the first blip on the police scanner Friday night.

The Bottom Line, the paper affiliated with student government, decided not to cover it at all. Because reporters' and photographers' and editors' and readers' feelings emotions would be too raw. Or something like that, I can't really tell what the reasoning is for a journalism publication.

Good time to change majors for the ones who made that decision, though.

 

Saw that yesterday. Crazy, isn't it?

Would be like the Times-Picayune not covering Katrina.

 

The other student paper was on it:

http://touch.latimes.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-80304548/

 

Torn between covering the college and being part of the college, I'd guess.

Doing both is possible, I suppose, but this certainly ain't the way to do it.

 

There are quite a few schools where the majority of the students assume the independent paper is the school paper and the actual student paper barely registers.

Not sure if that is the case here. It's still not an excuse.

I remember there was a similar deal at one of the Oklahoma student papers right after the bombing in 1995. It wasn't that it wasn't covered, and to be fair, it's not like it happened in their backyard, but there was zero mention of it whatsoever.

 

Scary if that's what we're coming to: Must put everyone's feelings ahead of the news.

 

The big difference in this case (along with the proximity to campus) is that the victims were UCSB students.

You can't excuse not covering this. If you don't, you have to ask yourself why you're in (or preparing to enter) this business in the first place.

 

Dumb. Plain dumb.

 

When I wrote for my college paper, I played my part in writing about a student who was with a couple of his friends on a hunting trip and was killed when a guy posing as a park ranger took their rifles and then shot the students.

The paper also covered events ranging from a baseball player getting paralyzed because his buddies made him slide head first into mud, to a fire that burned rooms in an on-campus apartment building.

Nobody worried about hurting anyone's feelings. They all involved students and they were news.

Regardless of whether a college paper falls under the college's control or not, it's not supposed to be "rah-rah-rah, sis-boom-bah" and pretend anything that doesn't promote school spirit just didn't happen.

 

So they're a PR publication and not a newspaper. What's the big deal?

 

Ah, but it wasn't US writing that, it was like a FORMER version of us writing that without our permission, you see?
http://thebottomline.as.ucsb.edu/2014/05/editorial-in-response-to-criticism-regarding-our-coverage-of-the-isla-vista-tragedy