NIU student journalists discuss shooting coverage
Students running out of Cole Hall, huddling in nearby buildings, text-messaging their friends, pulling classmates to safety: These were the images imprinted on the student journalists who covered the Feb. 14 shooting at Northern Illinois University.
The staff of the Northern Star, NIU's daily student newspaper, were the first journalists on the scene of the shooting that killed five of their classmates.
On Friday, about a month and a half after the tragedy, the student journalists had their first chance to assess how they covered a story that hit so close to home.
Officers from the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma paid a visit to the Northern Star Friday afternoon to lead students in a discussion about what they learned from the tragedy.
While it can be difficult to separate your emotions from your work when covering a tragedy in your own community, it can also make you a better journalist, Dart Center Executive Director Bruce Shapiro told students.
"It changes the picture whenever as a journalist, we're in a place where our own community is affected," Shapiro said after the three-hour session, which was closed to the public and other news media. "You become a little more aware of the ethical stakes."
Jim Killam, faculty adviser for the Northern Star, said the students handled themselves with professionalism and maturity during the aftermath of the tragedy.
"Everybody in the room has been in Cole Hall, and everyone has had classes there or taught classes there," Killam said. "You just naturally bring more empathy to a story like that when you're covering people who are your neighbors."
Shapiro said it's important to discuss these issues because of the way journalists help a community deal with and understand a tragedy.
"In the aftermath of tragedy, journalists are the way that a community tells its own story, are the way we come to understand the meaning of what happened," Shapiro said.
Killam said Friday's discussion was valuable for the students -- who'll have to face no shortage of tragedy as professional journalists.
"To get some tools to deal with those types of things … it just makes this an easier profession," Killam said.