Professional discussion of coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings

Those of you who wish to discuss the topic without the ancillary feuding and hot-button issues can do so here.

Are you watching CNN? MSNBC? Fox? Reading Web sites?

Which?

Thoughts about the pros and cons and limitations of instant coverage in the instant-information-and-misinformation age?

 

At work, so I'm following here, or I was, at least, until fnords infiltrated that thread.

There were a lot of folks on different stations, reporting lots of stuff. I'm glad it was there; we seem to have more stuff here than any other one place.

 

I'm watching MSNBC. Death toll's up to 31, fmrsped.

 

When I worked in Miami, there was a weekly newsroom-wide critique that went beyond the usual self-applause and pointed out what we learned the hard way from covering a type of story that might be useful to remember next time. I remember one was to be careful of using specific numbers in death tolls while it was still being sorted out -- say "at least 20 dead," not 23 dead. This is even more important in the Internet age. I see some Web sites hedging, others being prematurely specific.

 

I've heard there's video from inside the classroom via cell phone or something? Is this true? And which news channel has it?

 

CNN has phone video from just outside one of the buildings. You can hear shots and what sounds like an explosion (perhaps a shotgun blast or flash-bang grenade from a SWAT team).

 

I've seen cell video on MSNBC and CNN. Haven't seen any from inside the class room though.

 

timesdispatch.com and roanoke.com both shut down my Internet browser. Made me wonder how news organizations suddenly deal with that kind of traffic. I haven't ventured back to either site for fear of being shut down again, but when the story first started breaking, both sites were down.

 

Richmond Times-Dispatch links to two videos:

http://www.timesdispatch.com/

 

Everything's on video these days.
A nation of Zapruders.

 

MSNBC talking to a kid that was in the classroom. "Blood pretty much everywhere. Competely unreal."

The kid said the shooter came in, shot for about a minute, left and tried to get back in. This kid and another were on the floor holding the door closed with their feet. Kid said the shooter tried to shoot through the door to get back in, but failed and went away.

Wow.

 

I don't think that's a good thing either.