Sharing Grief: The Virginia Tech Massacre

My newsroom shift was yesterday afternoon, and I did little other than watch reports from CNN and FoxNews stream in. When nothing new was being reported, we got antsy and decided to see what the online community was discussing.

In the hope of finding something new, I jumped on Phishhook, a highly-trafficked message board, and—sure enough—there were several dozen posts, some from students at Virginia Tech. They reposted emails from the University, cut and pasted items from Wikipedia, and generally had a pretty good handle on the situation.

Then, after glancing at the site for several minutes, Multimedia Coordinator Patrick Lafferty and I logged onto the oft-maligned Wikipedia database. To my amazement, the site was more on top of its game than CNN. It had updates from more than a dozen different news sources, and posted breaking news well before CNN got it. It was interesting to watch the progression of the case from multiple angles. I’m not contending that Wikipedia is an infallible resource, or that CNN is a knuckle-dragging monolith--but it is fascinating to watch the online community and citizen journalists eclipse the single organization many Americans use for news.

CNN even had a caption at the bottom of their screen indicating that Virginia Tech students were posting items on Facebook and MySpace about the shooting. Within minutes, we examined the sites and discovered that more than 200 Hokies had signed up for a group discussion.

Simply put, there was more happening online than in the “real world” of fact gathering. How and why did this happen?

“Necessity is the mother of invention.”

When John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, the world stopped and people huddled next to their TV sets for an answer. Newspapers wouldn’t have an answer until the next day, so what else was there? Television created the cohesive narrative for a nation in grief.

No more national narrative. Walter Cronkite photo courtesy of Creative Commons

By placing all students under a beefed-up “house arrest,” Virginia Tech University paved the way for electronic communication. What other choice did students have? There was a need to discuss the most tragic shooting in U.S. history.

Eleven years ago, Reader’s Digest called Blacksburg, Virginia, “The Most Wired Town in America.” The infrastructure was there. The University also boasts nearly 39,000 people on Facebook. When you sequester grief-stricken college students for half a day in a highly connected campus, online outreach is inevitable.

My inelegant point is this: There is no single national narrative anymore.

Some people may tune in to CNN or FoxNews and never change the channel. Others may wait on Wikipedia for updates. Still others, seeking connection or condolences, may use MySpace or Facebook for their information and interaction. And then there’s the international scene: last night, BBC World News devoted 14 of its 30 minutes to the shootings, airing literally the longest sound bites I had heard on the nightly news.

The anchor no longer overshadows the story. With the JFK assassination, the world watched as Walter Cronkite peeled off his glasses and choked back tears of disbelief. When 9/11 hit, Aaron Brown went from a no-name to a household name within hours. The story isn’t about what an anchor or any single person thinks anymore, but the grief is no less palpable and the events no less tragic.

The story behind the story is that the whole concept of news and reporting has changed. Focusing on the quality of video or who filmed what is little more than a sideshow. Just as Virginia Tech students heard about the tragedy in different ways--some over PDA, others by word of mouth—the general public now gets its information from more sources than ever. The national narrative may have been lost, but our collective sense of bewilderment and grief remains.