From Cory Golden, via email: If you were a feature writer assigned to this, and you had your choice what you went after, where would you be drawn? How would you make your story different from the mass of material being generated by newspapers, magazines, TV and the Net? Reporters are surely drawn to different aspects of an event like this: are you the sort of person who’d want to reconstruct that fateful morning? Focus on one victim? Try to piece together the information about the shooter? And the choices reporters make about how to write a story — do you write the crap out of it? Or, do you step back and let people speak to readers through their quotes? — are going to be unique, as well. I’d also be interested to hear from reporters who’ve covered a tragedy, be it a shooting or a bus crash or a natural disaster, etc., that fast becomes a huge media event about how they handled it and, in that stressful environment, found their own story to tell, in their unique voices. When they look back now, what did they do that they believe still stands up? What would they do differently, given the chance?
Reporters are surely drawn to different aspects of an event like this: are you the sort of person who’d want to reconstruct that fateful morning? Focus on one victim? Try to piece together the information about the shooter? And the choices reporters make about how to write a story — do you write the crap out of it? Or, do you step back and let people speak to readers through their quotes? — are going to be unique, as well.
I’d also be interested to hear from reporters who’ve covered a tragedy, be it a shooting or a bus crash or a natural disaster, etc., that fast becomes a huge media event about how they handled it and, in that stressful environment, found their own story to tell, in their unique voices. When they look back now, what did they do that they believe still stands up? What would they do differently, given the chance?
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