Professional discussion of coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings

Anyone catch the Robin and Diane Show, featuring Chris Cuomo on Good Morning America this morning?

Naturally, they parachuted all three of them into Blacksburg last night. OK, I understand wanting your first-string on the big stories. That said, I don't need to hear Cuomo sounding like a cross between Grand Inquisitor Torquemada and Major Hochstetter from "Hogan's Heroes."

The moment Diane throws to him, he's full of indignation and general pissed-offedness at the wrong people.

"There are way too many unanswered questions about what university officials could have done to prevent this and we need answers to these questions, Diane."

"Yes, we do, Chris..." Diane cooed, right before going to a taped interview with the VT president, who she raked over the coals as if he was the one pulling the trigger.

At that, fortunately, it was time to take the kids to school and go to work... :

 

Not nearly as bad as the gal on MSNBC yesterday (Contessa?) who ended every interveiw with "Thank you so much. It's great to talk to you." Whether it was a student who was in building or a "firearms expert," that's what she said. I'm guessing that they didn't think it was so great to be talking to her.

 

That was nobody (except you, I guess) watches MSNBC at a moment like that. Viewers might go for their format at quiet times, but when the sh*t hits the fan you're going elsewhere.

And let me say, CNN is still my channel of choice at times like this because they have the solid resources in place.

 

HH, I was switching back between CNN and MSNBC yesterday. One had programming while the other had commercials. And even though I know Fox did a good job with the straight news part of Katrina, I can't bring myself to watch it.

 

I can't stand the TV media coverage of this. They had no clue what was going on the first 24 hours, so they hammered the notice and warning issue to death. Everyone who has been interviewed from the police to V.Tech has been grilled like they gave the murderer the gun and dropped him off at the front gate with a map to the dorms.

 

Was browsing through the Newseum site and found that Las Vegas Sun made NO mention of the shooting on its front. None.
http://www.newseum.org/todaysfrontpages/hr.asp?fpVname=NV_SUN&ref_pge=gal&b_pge=1

 

That's not a newspaper, that's an industry newsletter

 

A beautifully composed front, but shouldn't "33" be up in the overhead? Say, "Deadliest shooting spree in U.S. history / claims 33 in Virginia Tech community." Only mention is at the end of the very pertinent timeline. Given the daylong changing number, it should have been more prominent.

 

Good Lord Nancy Grace is there. Couldn't flip through that channel quick enough.

 

Nor can I, really, and not because of the supposed political slant but just because I don't think it's as accomplished in terms of being a worldwide news organization. That will change over time, I guess.

I have to recall that CNN wasn't much to look at when it got started, either.

 

I can't say that I've been following the TV news coverage today at all, but I know the newspaper stories linked on this and the other thread were spectacular in their detail and original reporting. I learned tons from reading different accounts. I have to think the print boys hammered the TV folks on this story. Of course, I'm not sure there's much difference now that print isn't really print at all, but a digital medium of its own distinction. In any case, I fully expect coverage from the Chicago Tribune, but I certainly never suspected that they'd be breaking stuff that far from the campus. And that's just to name one paper that I happened to read today.

 

A lot of papers have done great stuff. Today's my day off and I've spent part of it reading the different accounts. Looking at all of today's papers on Newseum, I am a little surprised at how little variation there is in the art. I guess I was expecting the papers in Virginia and the top national ones to have something different than the same two or three shots that every other paper in the country used.