Every so often, a college newspaper is thrust into the national spotlight. For The Collegiate Times at Virginia Tech University, this has happened twice in recent years — once in 2007 when a gunman opened fire and killed 33 people, including himself, in the deadliest mass shooting in American history.
The second time was on Thursday, when another shooting was reported on the campus. [The Lede blog has updates on the shooting, which has left two people, including a police officer, dead.]
In 2007, The Collegiate Times did not have a tool for publishing real-time updates and informing fellow students about what they had reported. On Thursday, the newspaper’s Twitter account, @collegiatetimes, was providing updates every few minutes, quickly becoming a source for information about the shooting and the response on campus as students and staff members were locked down during the afternoon.
Twitter became even more critical when the newspaper’s Web site crashed and the staff was evacuated from the newspaper office and moved to a secured area. (The paper’s Web site redirected to the Twitter feed.) The editors also posted Twitter updates on the newspaper’s Facebook page.
Within a few hours, the paper’s Twitter following grew by more than 18,000 — to more than 20,000 from 2,000 just before the news broke. The growth shows just how Twitter can amplify a single message, or a single account, even if that account is a college newspaper without a local following.
The Collegiate Times’s reporting began at 12:44 p.m., with a post relaying the university’s first alarm about the gunshots.
@CollegiateTimes Collegiate Times
A VT Alert was just sent, stating that gun shots were heard near Coliseum parking lot.
Reporters quickly followed with their own updates, asking their followers to share what information they had.
@CollegiateTimes Collegiate Times
Has anyone heard or seen anything regarding the gunshots? Tweet us @CollegiateTimes.
Information began coming to them and they shared it, including the official updates from @VTnews.
@CollegiateTimes Collegiate Times
BREAKING: It appears one person is dead in the Coliseum parking lot. Washington Street and area are closed. #virginiatech
They shared posts on Twitter with photos captured by students and a reporter from The Roanoke Times.
@CollegiateTimes Collegiate Times
RT @CTSportsTalk: Crime scene at Cassell Coliseum lot RT @LeroneNRV: Parking lot taped off. Body covered #vatech http://t.co/gNPGA5y3
Shortly after the initial reports of gunshots, journalists from ABC, NPR, The New York Times, The Huffington Post, and other outlets pointed readers to The Collegiate Times’s account on Twitter, helping the college newspaper gain attention.
Two or three students were posting from the account, including Nick Cafferky, a former intern for ESPN and a sports editor, and Zach Crizer, the newspaper’s editor in chief (Mr. Crizer also contributed to the coverage in The New York Times).
Mr. Cafferky said that the people sending out posts relied on information from the police scanner, what they could see from their dorm windows and other students and reporters on campus.
At one point, the editors were criticized for repeating unconfirmed reports from the scanner, but for the most part they noted what they knew and what they didn’t, including the reports that the second man dead was the shooter.
@CollegiateTimes Collegiate Times
Signs point to second victim being the gunman, but will have to wait for confirmation.
Finally, a message announced that the immediate danger was over:
@CollegiateTimes Collegiate Times
No active threat, resume normal activities
Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=b155e7ca7fef4a900fe77ca03255fd8a
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