I recognized Monday as the start of a news cycle I’ve become all too familiar with.
A storm that was supposed to bring anywhere from 1 to 3 feet of snow – and maybe more in the mountains – was crawling across the state; as if the white stuff we’d all forgotten about weren’t
enough, tornadoes preceded the blizzard; then President Bush gave Iraq’s royal family the get-out-of-Dodge-or-else warning.
What else could possibly happen? Perhaps I shouldn’t ask, because history has not been kind.
Many recent local and national tragedies have occurred on Tuesdays – deadline day for the Wednesday editions of the Castle
Rock News-Press and the Douglas County News-Press.
I remember sitting in front of the computer and listening to the frantic, often frustrated and even angry voices of emergency crews and dispatchers who responded to the Columbine High School
shootings on a Tuesday.
More recently, again on a Tuesday, I climbed into my car and headed toward the office only to hear that a plane – I pictured a single-engine prop job – had slammed into one of the World Trade
Center towers.
Then, about 10 minutes later, the second one hit. I knew, as everyone did, the event was no accident.
And now a blizzard, although a blizzard is a walk – OK, a trudge – through the park compared with the first two events.
Situations like these thrust journalists into their breaking-news mode of operation. It is, indeed, one of the most exciting aspects of being a journalist. Unfortunately, many times tragedy necessitates our shift into that mode.
In some cases, such as this blizzard, we might have time to prepare for it. Our Monday discussions this time focused more on logistics – what if only a few of us make it to work, for example?
In the case of Columbine, we decided to cover the event from a basic angle – no localizing. We had a couple reporters gather the news and an editor write the story. Then we placed it on the front
page, but it was not the “banner” story. Banner does not mean good, by the way, it means biggest.
We then followed with several weeks of related coverage geared specifically to Douglas County. That, of course, is called
localizing.
By Tuesday mornings, we usually have all but about three or four pages of the Wednesday editions done. We have a batch of stories ready to go and a few that we expect to trickle in on deadline. At
a mid-morning editors’ meeting, we decide which stories will go on which pages and in which editions.
Sept. 11, 2001, was a different process. We met as a newsroom, discussed stories that should be covered and from which angles. We dispatched a photographer to accompany the reporters on some
assignments.
The editors met separately and decided which stories not related to the terrorist attacks had to run that week and which stories we could hold for the following week. We then went to work, all the
while listening to radio broadcasts or watching a television broadcast in an adjacent room.
We put the paper together. Then we all somberly went home to contemplate the day’s events.
That is the thing about the breaking news mode. It distracts journalists. We have a job to do by a certain time. There is not
much time to get emotional about the events we cover when we are covering them.
That time comes hours, and sometimes days, later, when we’re at home and either alone or with family, friends or loved ones. It is then that we delve into the emotions. Those are the times we cry.
Thankfully, given the nature of this event, we won’t be crying, just doing a whole lot of shoveling – at least until the war begins.
Matthew Vuletich is the managing editor of the News-Press.