JEA.org | Journalism Education Association

This article originally printed in a special 1999 edition of Communication: Journalism Education Today.

INTRODUCTION | COVERAGE | POLICIES | RAPPORT | A ROLE

"The new issue devoted to covering crises, tragedies and deaths in the school represents a remarkable achievement of content, photography, design and presentation. This resource will be used for years and become a standard reference in the field. The tremendous planning and work which went into this publication is clearly evident and, beyond what it does so well, the magazine reflects tremendous credit upon the educators and students and scholastic journalism."
Wayne Brasler (University of Chicago HS, Chicago, Illinois)

This Web supplement only includes a portion of the remaining text, the lead articles on coverage, developing a plan, writing policies, establishing a rapport with various agencies and the role of the student journalist. The remainder of the text is only available in the print edition originally mailed to all members and subsequently reprinted. However, in 2010, 10 years after the original edition, JEA has made the material available online in PDF format. CLICK HERE to view the PDF version.

After the Oklahoma City bombing, the headline in Time magazine ran, "It Couldn't Happen Here." Similar headlines ran after the shootings in Columbine and after the attack on America Sept. 11. If we've learned one thing, it's that disasters can happen anywhere.

Reporting about tragic situations may well be the most difficult job facing student journalists. Because they are caught in the drama of the moment, students may find themselves unprepared to handle the situation. Also their task may become more difficult because they are understandably inexperienced and emotionally involved.

Regardless, it's likely that a crisis will occur in any given year, and it helps to be prepared. Whether it's a car wreck, a suicide, a fire, a natural disaster, a bomb threat or an intended act of violence, this special issue of C:JET was designed to help student media staffs be better prepared to produce their best work during what will probably be the worst time of their lives.

The complete print edition includes 72 pages of in-depth coverage with case studies on

It includes sidebars on

And it includes ready-to-use exercies on

INTRODUCTION | COVERAGE | POLICIES | RAPPORT | A ROLE

"The winter issue arrived on my desk yesterday. Wow. You have truly provided a vital work for all of us. What a joy to receive such professional, well-designed issues which you consistently produce. I will be ordering extra copies of this one for classroom use (if extras are available). Thank you for all the hard work you do. "
Phyllis Wipf (Maize HS, Maize, Kansas).

By Linda Puntney, MJE

More than anything else, scholastic journalism should create an opportunity for understanding. By providing fair and full coverage, the student media can serve as a conduit for telling the story of every individual in the school.

Journalists such as Kevin Koelling mass communications graduate student at Middle Tennessee State University, suggest the mission of scholastic journalists ought to be “to go out and get understanding. Bring it back and write it up so we can provide it to readers.”

Story assignments should always be based on these questions: “How does the event or policy being covered affect our readers?” and “What are the truths about our school?”

One truth of every school will be diversity of the students. It is the responsibility of every student media staff to tell the story of all groups and to allow them an outlet for expressing their views.

“Ask the wearers of trench coats, jock jackets, Goth garb or any other different apparel what they believe in. Tell them what you’ve heard, and ask for their response to any rumors going around about them,” Koelling said. “If their answers scare you, get a trusted adult involved. It just might be they’re more normal than they appear and that giving them a chance to be heard could defuse feelings like those which led to the Littleton shootings.”

In addition to broad-based representation of students, media staffs should consider multiple-angle coverage. The whole story is more apt to be covered completely if the reporting includes a triad approach that uses news accounts, feature stories and opinion pieces to inform, involve and influence readers.

News vs. feature

The facts of an event are naturally best covered in a news story. The reader needs to know what happened, when it happened and how it happened. If the elements of timeliness and proximity can be answered in your coverage, then straight news coverage is the best type of story to develop.

When human interest, conflict and consequence dominate the information gathered by the reporter, then a feature story may be more appropriate. The feature story can personalize coverage and touch the readers’ emotional buttons in ways straight facts never can.

In the Sports Illustrated article “It Doesn’t Get Any Tougher Than This,” Rick Reilly tells the story of Dawn Anna, the 110-pound volleyball coach at Columbine High School. Anna, who could have died twice on the operating table, and has survived ovarian cancer and brain surgery, Reilly, though, recounts the tough days that started on April 20. Wrote Reilly: “That’s when she found out that last year’s captain, Lauren Townsend, the school’s 4.0 valedictorian, had been murdered while studying in the school library. Lauren was Dawn’s youngest child.”

In that one paragraph Reilly shows the reader the horrific tragedy of Columbine. And in one quote Anna sums up the unbelievable circumstances that took her daughter’s life.

“You know, I always told my kids to be careful crossing the street, and I told them to be careful riding their bikes,” Anna said, “but I never thought to tell them to be careful studying in the library.”

Often the story of a tragedy can best be covered through the microscopic view of one person or one aspect of an event. Those up-close-and-personal views make coverage of tragic events more real to the reader.

Opinion pieces complete the coverage package by offering the staff’s position on the event. Editorials offer calls to action, influence by expressing a staff position or inform by interpreting survey results.

Tragic events often generate action to change things so the tragedy might not be repeated. Action editorials might call for the administration to take a closer look at policies, for gun-control legislation to be enacted or for individuals to be more receptive to the opinions of others.

Editorials also offer an opportunity to express the collective voice of the publication. The Stinger, Emmaus (Pa.) High School let its readers know in the March 26, 1999 issue how the staff felt about security guards being added to the school.

“If we’re going to open the school to the community, we need to protect the students from all possible dangers. Officers in the school would make students feel safer by at least making someone think twice before entering the school….”

At Pleasant Valley (Iowa) Community High School, the Spartan Shield staff suggested a dress code might relieve tensions at the school. To support their argument in their April 30, 1999, edition, they made reference to Columbine. “If a dress code had been in effect at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., would the tragedy have occurred? Take away their trench coats, and there would be no Trench Coat Mafia.”

In Chesterfield, Mo., the staff of the Parkway Central Corral used the editorial page to inform their readers by reporting the results of an April 30, 1999, survey that showed 78 percent of the 100 students interviewed felt safe in their school but believed the district needed some kind of plan to evacuate the building or grounds in an emergency.

The kind of tragedy and the timeliness must shape wise decisions about the form of the stories. Whatever the approach, the editors must insist on thorough reporting and sensitive word choice.

INTRODUCTION | COVERAGE | POLICIES | RAPPORT | A ROLE

By Bradley Wilson, CJE

The death of a student, faculty or staff member is tragic. But, if high-school publications across the nation are any indication, not all deaths are treated equally. In one newspaper, a student who had died in a hunting accident was “immortalized” in a double-page spread. No one on the staff knew the student. Apparently, few others did either because the copy was a series of vague testimonials that told the reader little about the victim.

Another school dedicated the yearbook to students who had died during the year by including dominant photos of them on the title page of the yearbook without any explanation.

Other schools choose to say nothing about the deaths. Still others write a factual news story and include some details in the yearbook.

Advisers across the nation agree that how an individual school treats a death depends on the circumstances. Clearly the criteria for news dictates that deaths may be covered differently depending particularly on the timeliness of the coverage and the prominence of the person who has died. Advisers also agree that the best way to prevent emotional entanglements is to write a policy to detail how deaths will be covered in both the yearbook and newspaper.

“Personally, I think ‘In Memoriam’ and a name demeans a life by reducing it to a list. If we’re teaching journalism to both our students and their readers we have to face the challenge and report lives and deaths as we report all else,” Wayne Brasler of University High School (Chicago, Ill.) said.

Such policies help prevent unbalanced, biased coverage.

Judy Knudtsen of Alberta Lee (Minn.) High School said her staffs established a procedure to deal with student deaths after a couple of “problems.”

“If we had a picture of the student,… we printed it in alpha order with the class. (We also had) the counselors contact the parents in what would have been that classmate’s senior yearbook and ask if they would give us the most recent photo – if we didn’t have it .… We printed it slightly larger, not much (maybe 9 x 12 picas instead of 8 x10), put the name and birth and death date only under it, and put a two-point black border around it. Period,” Knudtsen said. “Our rationale – what we do for one we do for all and unless we’re prepared to do a full obit for everyone – student, custodian, faculty, etc. we do it for no one.”

Brasler said their policy is to cover the death as another story deserving of publication. He said that poetry and other “cliché” artwork can do more harm than good.

“We have no written policy, but we cover deaths journalistically – we give the facts emphasizing the contributions a person made, why people will miss him or her and the circumstances of death handled with taste and kindness,” Brasler said. “We would never print poetry about someone who died, or picture birds on the wing silhouetted against a sunset. We feel those kind of clichés can be a real insult tothe value of a life.”

Usually, such policies and precedent come about after years of experience or hearing stories from other schools.

For example, Ellen Kersey, a second-year yearbook adviser at Camarillo (Calif.) High School, said she is learning from the reaction to the death of a student last year.

“We had a student who would have been a junior die early last school year. Unfortunately, the yearbook did nothing,” Kersey said. “Dad kept calling – me, the principal, the superintendent after the book came out. The staff and I decided we would do something this year.”

But that “something” became a dilemma.

“This week I called and asked for a color photo of the young man, who would have been a senior this year, as we’re putting his ‘memorial’ in the color senior section. Lo and behold, I am informed they have paid several hundred dollars to have ‘the page’ done by a graphic artist. And on the page is a poem written by a cousin. My first dilemma is that they have assumed we are doing a ‘page.’ My second dilemma is that there are two errors in the poem. When I pointed that out to the family, the response was ‘But that’s the way our cousin wrote it, and we don’t want to make changes’ and ‘it would cost us a couple of hundred (dollars) to have it changed.’ Anyway, I now see that if we had had an obit policy, I could have told them ahead of time what we would and would not accept.”

Vicki Reneé of The Colony (Texas) High School revised her 2-year-old policy after three accidental deaths (a drowning, a hit-and-run and a car accident) during her first two years on the job.

“Our obit policy reads: ‘Should a student or teacher die while the yearbook is still in production, a four-block space designed and produced by the yearbook ads manager will be placed in the personal ads section in honor of that person.’ We sold full personal ads pages to students wishing to purchase the space,” Reneé said.

“However, we wrote the policy to cover students who did not have friends with enough money to purchase a full-page ad. Last year, with a suicide (and two more this year) my principal requested that the policy be revised so the yearbook staff was in complete control of the information so as not to ‘celebrate’ this type of death. This policy will be revised again this year as we will give ‘space as available’ to students who have died.”

A policy, however, may not avoid all interest from administrators and community residents as Edie Leo of Reynolds High School in Troutdale, Ore. discovered.

“Our policy has been ‘when students or staff members die during the course of the school year, their names will be placed … in the closing section of the yearbook.’ (Our principal) wants us to give one-page memorials (free of charge) to anyone who dies,” Leo said.

“His interest was triggered because we have sold commercial ad pages to interested students who wanted to immortalize the memory of their friends. In the past, these students have applied for funds to pay for such ‘ads’ and have then submitted photos and text to the staff. It has kept us out of the legal tangle of who you do what for...murder, suicide, drive by, multiple deaths, as well as accidental or illness.

“This was a decision of the staff, but now they are being told to decide where they will have this coverage and who will do it and what will go on these pages.”

INTRODUCTION | COVERAGE | POLICIES | RAPPORT | A ROLE

By Bradley Wilson, CJE

Reporters at newspapers and police department public information officers throughout the nation seem to agree on one procedure: reporters need to establish a positive working relationship with the law enforcement agencies in their coverage area if the journalists expect to produce good stories.

For high school, middle school and private school reporters, the preparation may be as simple as checking in regularly with the campus police officer or the officer who covers the school beat. Or it may mean walking down the street to the neighborhood fire station or city administration building.

“Contacts made before an incident are critical,” said Susan Rossi, public information officer for the Arvada (Colo.) Police Department. “Conduct regular beat checks with PIOs in emergency service fields. It can sometimes land the reporter an exclusive story. I know that when I have seven calls on my voice mail about the same crime, I return the calls of reporters who make regular beat checks. (I figure there should be some rewardfor taking the time to regularly call.)”

Rossi said the public information officers should be the primary contact on a scene because most law enforcement officers won’t want to comment directly, particularly about an ongoing investigation.

“The PIO ‘usually’ has the most up-to-date information,” she said. “Reporters shouldn’t expect to know a great deal at the start of an incident because the events are most likely still unfolding. At this point, the basics are probably all you are going to get.”

Todd Nelson, a reporter with the Raleigh (N.C.) News & Observer, agreed that establishing this relationship with officers on the street and their commanding officers is critical for getting usable information. He suggested checking in with sources regularly.

“Check in with sources every day, in investigations, in patrol particularly,” he said.“You’ll know what’s going on, and when the officers see that you’re interested and paying attention, they’ll tend to give you more information or tip you to stories you might not have found in reports.”

Further, Nelson said establishing such a relationship will make officers more comfortable in helping you cover your story by giving you details that can put a new light on the case.

“As you cover the beat, you might find that officers are willing to provide some details of a case off the record to put it into context or indicate where an investigation is going,” he said. “You’ll get a better story as the case develops with this background information. But don’t publish information an officer said was off the record. Most officers have a one-strike-and-you’re-out policy. Burn them once, and they won’t talk to you again or won’t offer confidential information for a long time. And they’ll let other officers know about the experience.”

However, Nelson said getting information directly from an officer is possible if handled right.

“Police are usually busy so if you approach an officer at an accident scene or even in the office to ask for information, identify yourself and let them know you would like to speak to them or to the person who is releasing information when they have a moment,” he said. “That works better than storming up as a stranger and demanding information immediately, as you might imagine.”

In the second edition of the Student Press Law Center’s report Covering Campus Crime (©1999), Matthew Waite, a reporter at the University of Nebraska’s Daily Nebraskan, said “Remember that cops are human beings too.… Talk with them. Get to know them. Give them an oppportunity to see that you are human, too.…”

Rossi pointed out that some information, no matter how much you want it and officers may want to give it out, may be confidential depending on state laws regarding the release of information – the names of minors, for example.

To obtain the official record of an incident, reporters can turn to the official, and public, written records. Such reports are often superficial and include information such as time, date, place and nature of the offense; victim’s name, age, address, employer, home and work phone numbers; name of officer or person initiating the report; list of property stolen, damaged or recovered, with value of that property; and a case number.

Nelson said the reports are generally readily available but noted that reporters will often have to use the case number to track down more useful information.

Some reports, particularly those of campus crime statistics, can be elusive because administrators are often less than willing to disclose this public information.

“Clearly, students who know about the dangers that exist on campus are less likely to be crime victims,” the SPLC report says. “Unfortunately, some schools continue to do everything they can to keep crime information secret.…”

The SPLC booklet specifically points out that some reports such as campus police records, annual crime statistics reports and campus court information are public information on most college campuses, public and private. Similar information is often obtainable for public school districts.

“Perhaps no information is more important to the journalist covering campus crime than the records of the law enforcement officials with jurisdiction over the school,” the SPLC report said. “The records of these agencies are the ‘meat and potatoes’ of most crime reporting.”

INTRODUCTION | COVERAGE | POLICIES | RAPPORT | A ROLE

By Jack Zibluk
Assistant Professor of Journalism
Arkansas State University

There really seems to be no answer.

When young people are killed or hurt at a school, students, parents, teachers, administrators, local officials, professionals and clergy grope for answers in the aftermath.

Each situation is unique. The reasons behind each are just as individual and always complex. The common denominator is that no one, not even the individually affected person, can heal themselves. Every one can help.

Student media may help or hinder the healing process. The proper role, according to Russell Dixon, clinical psychologist with St. Bernard’s Regional medical center in Jonesboro, Ark., “depends on where the school is in the healing process.”

Dixon was director of the counseling center at Arkansas State University on March 24, 1997 when two boys, 11 and 13, shot and killed four classmates and a teacher at Westside Middle School. The community immediately mobilized, and Dixon was one of the primary coordinators of the effort. Counselors, teachers and clergy met individually with students, parents and teachers to work with them on their specific needs. The school re-opened, and classes started less than two weeks later.

Today, Westside is almost eerie in its normalcy. The school proudly displays pictures of its honors graduates and trophies. Smiling students walk through the halls. It is spotless.

There are no memorials to the dead.

“We want to be as normal as possible,” said Dick Young, superintendent of schools. Young started at Westside in the fall of 1998. The previous superintendent announced his retirement before the shootings. After the shootings, in the spring of ’98, the student yearbook printed a one-page “in memorial” with a picture of the school bedecked with white ribbons and a poem.

That was the last mention of the tragedy in the student media.

When school started in the fall, not a word was mentioned in the student newspaper and there was no retrospective on the tragedy in the spring of ’99. Young said he discouraged any mention of it. Young said he thinks that the Westside staff should work with students on an individual basis. “It’s an intuitive thing. We get to know our students and their needs. If there’s trouble, we work with them one on one,” he said.

Student media has no role in his approach to deal with the aftermath of the shootings. He said any further attention, even positive coverage of the heroic efforts of staff and students or memorials to the dead, would draw unwanted attention and raise painful, perhaps harmful, memories. “We don’t want to pick at the scabs,” he said. “We want them to heal.”

At Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., the student media took a different approach.

“We’re getting a lot of attention,” said Marilyn Saltzman, director of communication for the Jefferson County School system in which Columbine is located. “We’re dealing with a lot of media all the time, even after four months.”

She said she was sure the student newspaper and yearbook would address the aftermath of the April 20, 1999 rampage of two students who killed 12 other students and a teacher before turning their guns on themselves.

Clearly, though, Columbine is addressing its issue in a more public fashion than Westside. On Aug. 15, 1999, with the re-opening of the school, Principal Frank D’Angelis presided over a “take back the school day,” in which students returned to the school for the first time in four months under the klieg lights of television crews. The news crews agreed to keep a respectful distance and they flew no helicopters overhead, but students and staff still talked to the media.

“We decided to work with the media,” Saltzman said. “We wanted people to know we’re taking our school back.”

Dixon does not necessarily favor either Columbine’s more public approach to the healing process or Westside’s more private one. “The key thing,” he said, “is to know where your school is (in the healing process) and make your plans from there.”

He said Columbine’s situation is more complicated and difficult than Westside’sbecause those who were affected by the killings had four months to consider the trauma before returning to school. There was much more physical damage at Columbine, which reminded students more of the tragedy.

“When something like this happens, it’s critical to deal with it immediately,” he said.

He noted that the Westside students returned to school less than two weeks after the shootings and began immediately to try to return to a sense of normalcy. Their fears didn’t have as much of a chance to take hold. Since Columbine students had the summer off, they faced their traumas months after the original shock.

In that time, the psychological wounds might deepen.

Kathy Lawrence, director of student publications at the University of Texas, Austin, cautions student journalists not to become too involved in spot-news coverage as a tragedy occurs.

“If students wish to cover tragedies as they happen, the school may run the risk of liability and lawsuits if the students take risks beyond what is prudent and expressed by us verbally and in writing,” Lawrence said.

She suggests advisers should have guidelines in place about how to cover tragedies before they occur.

“Obviously, the measures needed for a 15-year-old high school student may be different from those for a 21-year-old college senior with two pro internships under the belt. Take reasonable care to ensure personal safety, obey law enforcement, do not interfere with officers,” she said. “We can’t be held liable, but this will haunt us for the rest of our days.”

No matter what the circumstances, Dixon said student media should not ignore the aftermath of tragedies.

“In each case, student media has a role to play,” he said. “But each case is unique so the right answers may be different.”

If the event is recent, student media may point out ways to deal with tragedy and serve as a referral service, pointing out where to go for help.

However, he said it would be a mistake to dwell on the situation.

“These people will remember it all their lives. It’s important not to re-hash the tragedy, That serves no purpose,” she said.

Lawrence also suggests caution, but she said student media should not shy away from coverage.

“We must weigh special considerations — the school community’s right to know versus our responsibility not to inflame or increase anguish about the event,” she said.

“To ignore or downplay an event? Ridiculous. What will the students at any high school where a shooting has occurred remember as they go through their adult lives? That incident, along with, we hope, lots of positive things about relationships and learning. But the incident won’t be erased from anyone’s mind, and the student medium has a perfect opportunity to play a community leadership role in helping people cope and recover.”

The role of the student media may differ from the role of the professional press.

“The event must be placed in perspective,” Lawrence stressed. “The student medium in most cases won’t be offering minute-by-minute coverage. It doesn’t need to rehash that coverage but to offer a broader and longer perspective. Often the student perspectives over time will be the more meaningful — certainly more so than the camera jostling and needless overkill we saw in some of the incidents last year, especially from electronic media.”

Dixon agreed. He, too, said it is important to put the story in perspective. After the initial reporting, he recommended addressing specific needs as they arise.

“The most important thing is to listen,” Dixon said. “If there is a problem a lot of students are facing, do a story. But if there is not, you’re not helping anyone by bringing it up again.”

As time goes on, he said it is appropriate to do annual memorials for those who have died and features on those who helped, either quietly or heroically.

“It’s going to be on people’s minds. The student media can help focus attention on those who did good. They can serve as examples,” Dixon said. “That need will never go away.”