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Archive for April 17th, 2007

Va. Tech shootings front pages

Tuesday, April 17th, 2007

Take a look at these front pages from today.

Maybe it’s because all the time we spent analyzing front pages, especially front pages across the country when major breaking news occurred, in news design last semester. Maybe I’m just weird. But it is one of my favorite things to do to look at newspaper’s side-by-side and compare how they handle such stories.

It is such a gut-wrenching story and one people are just drawn to. Yesterday, I heard about it walking past a professor’s office as she was pulling up CNN.com. Then, when I walked into the j-school office, the entire room was transfixed, all eyes on the coverage. Even today, I was on the phone with one of my regular sources and he asks me, “I haven’t been around a TV today. What’s the latest news on the shooting?” And I told him what I knew (just from watching MSNBC in the background of our newsroom and periodic refreshing of Google news) and pointed him to jconline for the latest updates, including the Purdue connection.

Our front page, which rarely gives prominent play to non-local stories, was dominated by the massacre. With local flavor/reaction. Tomorrow’s front page will again be dominated with the fall out from the story — including a few Purdue grads who were among those killed, as well as other locals with Va. Tech ties.

Anyway, thanks to Poynter for pulling that list together. There’s also a good, detailed analysis of the fronts. I particularly found the comments about The Wall Street Journal vs. Canada’s National Post interesting:

Two of North America’s national newspapers provide the strongest contrast of how to report the shootings. Canada’s National Post devoted the entire page to the story, reversing out its flag and all the text. The headline command attention; demanding that readers delve deeper into the stories. By contrast, The Wall Street Journal put the story atop its ‘What’s News’ briefs.

If you want to see more, there’s always Today’s Front Pages, which also has an analysis of today’s pages. (There is no permalink, so hopefully that link holds for a little bit.) It reads:

Newspapers all over the world share a universal truth today: No matter what else is happening, the shooting deaths of 33 students at Virginia Tech made Page One.

For Virginia newspapers, no headline was too bold, no photo too large. …

Elsewhere around the nation, oversized, stark, often all-caps headlines told the story:…

QOTD: Find out what you like doing best…

Tuesday, April 17th, 2007

“The best career advice to give the youg is, ‘Find out what you like doing best and get someone to pay you for doing it.'”
— Katharine Whiteborn

Or as I have said before, “I don’t get paid enough to hate my job.” I wouldn’t be doing it if it wasn’t what I truly felt I should be and honestly want to do with my life.

A bonus quote on the same topic:

“Our world is incomplete until each of us discovers what moves us — our passion. No other person can hear our calling. We must listen and act on it for ourselves.”
— Richard J. Leider