NIU official offers advice on handling media during a crisis

Nothing could have prepared Northern Illinois University officials for the Valentine's Day shootings and the aftermath that drew local, national and international attention, said Melanie Magara, the school's vice president of public affairs.

What helped the school navigate through the phone calls and interview requests was an open relationship with the media and a plan of action the school developed shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, refined after the Virginia Tech shootings.

"My honest answer is that nothing can prepare you for what we experienced, all the emotion and explaining the unexplainable." Magara said. "And yet, we have to do our best."

As the school continues healing from the tragedy in which a lone gunman killed five students inside a lecture hall before turning the gun on himself, Magara announced that this week the tragedy will no longer occupy a prominent position on the school's Web site.

"We're trying to move on," she said, adding that links to the catastrophe will still remain on the site.

Magara appeared Monday at McHenry County College as part of a program organized by the Algonquin-Lake in the Hills Fire Protection District. She urged attendees to commit their own action plans to memory.

The fire protection district organized the event two months after meeting with members of the media to discuss how both entities could work together and serve the public, said Kim Matz, the district's public information officer.

Monday's talk was meant to impart similar wisdom to local agencies.

NIU has been widely praised for its response to the shootings.

Within an hour of the tragedy, officials had posted a message about them on the school's Web site, decided who was responsible for what, canceled classes and scheduled a news conference.

With the media arriving in helicopters and phone calls coming in from around the world, time was of the essence, she said.

"Clearly, there's no time to have a meeting to decide what to say," Magara said.

She also encouraged the entities in attendance Monday -- Community Unit District 300, and the Huntley, Rutland Dundee and the Algonquin-Lake in the Hills fire protection districts -- to view the media as partners and to cultivate positive relationships and accommodate them within reason, because they will help disseminate information.

As an example, college President John Peters made himself accessible to multiple media outlets the day after the tragedy, which helped the school put a human face on the events, she said.

"That type of accommodation really went a long way," she said.

Ken Arndt, superintendent of District 300, commended the school for its response and, with his voice breaking, praised university officials for attending the funeral of Ryanne Mace, a 2006 Dundee-Crown High School graduate.

She was one of the five students killed at NIU.

"We lost a member of our community that day," Arndt said.

If you have a negative relationship with reporters from the start, your words and actions will be scrutinized a lot more closely, she said.

When it comes to deciding who to talk to, Magara advised attendees to give first preference to the local media because they know and understand the area, have been there since the beginning and will speak directly to the readers most affected.

The national media on the other hand, will breeze in for a few days, sensationalize the story and then move onto the next big story, she said.

"Our preference, our priority, were for those media we deal with day in and day out," she said.

Magara ended her talk with photographs of the five students murdered on campus that day: Mace, Dan Parmenter, Gayle Dubowski, Catalina Garcia and Julianna Gehant.

During the school's graduation on Saturday, three of the five students received posthumous degrees. Two families chose to wait to get theirs.

"We will never forget what happened on our campus," Magara said, her voice breaking.