News Highlights

Virginia Tech journalism students were primary sources of early media information

KMSU interviews students' professor

Student journalists at Virginia Tech were among the primary sources of early media information about the April 16 shootings. Now the students and their professor have written a book about the harrowing experience, and KMSU-FM will broadcast an interview with the professor at 9:15 a.m. Thursday, Sept. 13.

2007-09-13
By Amanda Dyslin, Free Press Staff Writer [published in The Free Press, Mankato, MN, 9/13/2007]

When the morning began, they were journalism students, showing up to class every day to learn what it takes to be a reporter. By the end of that day — Monday, April 16 — they were journalists, having earned their stripes on the most horrific event in their school’s history.

When word of the shoot­ings circulated the Virginia Tech campus that morning, journalism professor Roland Lazenby sprung into action and told his students to do the same. This was breaking news, and it was their job to get the word out to people on the student-run Web site www.PlanetBlacksburg.com.

“The best information that the outside world got, includ­ing the New York Times ... was from these students who had a Web site they were updating regularly,” said Karen Wright of Minnesota State University’s KMSU Radio, who will interview Lazenby and one of his stu­dents, Omar Maglalang, this morning live on the air. The students spread out with notebooks, attempting to cross police tape, talking with students about their sto­ries and witnessing troubling scenes, such as body bags ringing from cell phones in the victims’ pockets, perhaps loved ones attempting to call to see if they were all right.

They struggled with being objective and reporting the news while actually being part of the news, themselves, and knowing the names and faces they were writing about.

“They had access that the outside world didn’t,” Wright said.

Lazenby and his students put their firsthand experi­ences into a book, “April 16th: Virginia Tech Remembers,” the first book released on the Virginia Tech Massacre. When it crossed Wright’s desk at KMSU, she snapped up the opportunity to do an interview.

She plans to focus on the personal side of their experi­ence, what it was like being there, what has changed now that they have hindsight, how they separated themselves emotionally from the situa­tion as journalists while still being part of the news.

The book allowed the students to speak from an emotional perspective, some­thing they weren’t afforded when reporting the events on the site. They struggled with whether it was too soon after the event to publish, even commenting on their struggle in the book, but in the end thought the stories needed to be told.

The book gives voice to the students, faculty and staff who lived through the events and to themselves. The last third of the book serves as a memorial to the 32 victims.

The book also focuses on the overwhelming media response and the importance of not ignoring the “ little guy” community reporters who often have access to more information from more personal sources in a more timely manner.

Royalties from the book will go for scholarships, vic­tims’ funds and other chari­ties.

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