Decompressing From the Virginia Tech Shootings

April 17, 2007

As I come down from the contact high of adrenaline brought about by deadlines on top of dealines, exposure to screaming producers, competing with ourselves and others, the constant din of satellite truck generators, running from this breaking event to that… I’m now able to come up for air. Before I type another word, (i worry that the remainder of them will be less than coherent) I have to point out how much I admire the hard work, talent, and tireless dedication of the people with whom I work. Before you read another word of this blog, please take a moment to see the hard work of my colleagues and me. Did we do this story justice?

We’ve thrown tremendous resources at this. We’ve shipped in crews from Burbank, New York, Washington DC (my bureau), Dallas and probably others who I don’t even know of. We have three satellite trucks here with a combined transmission capacity of 14 video paths out and we’re still fighting over who feeds first. I think Michael Rosenblum may have picked a bad day to push the VJ solution at NAB. Would having a couple of them there be helpful? Sure! Chris Brogan has an interesting (as always) take on this.

Nightly News set

Small Portion of Sat Truck Farm

We’ve got anchors from both the Today Show and Nightly News with all of the associated production support. We brought incredible resources to bear on this story and I think it shows in the coverage. At this stage of a story like this, you need to put in place a mechanism for managing all of these resources. We’ve now set up a temporary “bureau”, where a bureau chief focuses on getting old union cameramen like me off the clock, making sure the shows are staffed properly, and letting people know where they’re expected to be and when.

So since the bureau chief “goodnighted” me, I finally have time to reflect. It’s a amazing to me that my Monday of blogging, video editing, phone calls, a movie with my daughter, was shattered by this:

This was the Twitter tweet from Connie Reece that sank like a pit in my stomach. First and foremost for the victims, I knew that the saddest part of this story would be the friends and family these victims left behind. I also had a sadly knee-jerk question in the back of my mind.. terrorism? Just as the self-centered thought “I wonder if they’ll call…” BZZZZZZZZ the blackberry danced across my desk. Next thing I know I’m jamming down 66 towards 81, Twittering breathlessly, which Connie Reece blogs about it here.

I’ve worked big stories, to be sure, but I work with people who’ve worked WAY more than me. We like to measure things..best, worst, least, most. I’ve been assured by my colleagues and contemporaries, that never have they seen this many satellite trucks.

Funny how counting sat dishes somehow assigns news value. An even worse metric is the notion of “worst shooting ever”. Have we reached a point where tragedy has to reach a certain threshold? Is there some awful victim to sat truck ratio? I hope not, but suspect there’s a little more than just a grain of truth to that.

The role of tradional media in some ways has become a starting point for incredibly vauluable discussions online. Andy Carvin blogged about the need for reliable emergency broadcast SMS tools. Tom Costello did a spot for NBC Nightly News (i shot most of the on campus elements for this) on how students used technology to communicate and share their grief. Clearly phones played a huge role here in the form of citizen journalism, communication and community.

InfoWorld has a nice wrap of how crowdsourcing technologies helped shape this story. Harrowing accounts of Mondays horror showed up in online journals as well. So what blossoms from terrible events is often useful discussion. Maybe these discussions will lead to ideas that may help prevent things like this from happening, or if nothing else, just help folk get through it, and talk it out.

Point me to other ideas and conversations you found about the shootings, the media coverage and/or social media tools that trumped traditional channels.

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Posted in Connie Reece, NAB, NAB07, NAB2007, TV news, Twitter, Virginia Tech Shootings, blogging, journalism, new media, old media, social media, technology, tradtional media, video blogging, video journalist