Lessons learned since Feb. 14

I just spent an hour talking with someone who was in the Cole Hall basement at 3 p.m. Feb. 14. Seven people down there heard the whole horrible event overhead – gunshots, screaming, a mad stampede for the auditorium exits. Those in the basement barricaded themselves in offices for 90 minutes, not knowing if a shooter would burst through the doors at any moment. Finally, police arrived and led them out.

As a journalist, I should have been taking notes and running a voice recorder. As a college newspaper adviser, I should have asked if he minded if a student reporter interviewed him. But this was a friend, telling me not only about what he experienced that day, but what he’s experienced since, emotionally. At some point, his will make a compelling story. Just not right now.

Such has been the day-to-day experience of helping my students cover this story, while we also have been part of the story and dealing with the emotional fallout. We are all experiencing thoughts and emotions that are difficult to explain to someone who wasn’t here that day. Here at the Northern Star, we’ve learned a lot about being friends first, journalists second. One of our students, Dan Parmenter, died that day. Two others were in the auditorium and escaped without being hit. They are dealing with a lot right now.

We’ve heard the term “NIU family” bandied about lately. To be honest, I’d never really thought of NIU that way. The Northern Star and its alumni are most definitely a family, but the whole university? We have 25,000 students, and 3,300 faculty and staff. It’s more of a small city than a family.

That perception has changed, at least for now. Wherever we were at 3 p.m., we all experienced something absolutely awful together. Whether we knew each other or not, “Where were you?” became the first line of almost every conversation for a few days.

We also have become a lot more aware of what’s going on around us. We watch each other’s backs. I sat this week in the Holmes Student Center coffee shop, talking with Geri Nikolai from the Rockford Register Star. Across the room, two male students ran toward a door, trying to catch a Huskie Bus. I completely lost my train of thought by zeroing in on those two guys until I knew they weren’t dangerous.

When a lone student stands outside a building, we give a second and third glance. When someone walks into a classroom late, everyone turns and looks. And I suppose I’ll never look at a guitar case the same way again. It’s not that we’re fearful, at least outwardly. We’re just more alert.

We’ve also grown to understand something counselors call “event fatigue.” We are talked out, counseled out and just plain tired. It’s not that we mind talking about the tragedy. We’re just out of things to say.

Since Feb. 14, I’ve probably done 30 interviews with reporters (print, broadcast and online) from all over the world. Some of our Northern Star students have done even more. We learned quickly how to distinguish between reporters who see you as that day’s story, and those who genuinely care.

Examples of the former: A national TV producer, on the phone an hour after the shootings, who told one of our students, “This could be your one chance to be on national TV.” Or the network camera man, covering a church service, who asked parishioners to sit down during the scripture reading because they were blocking his shot.

Examples of the latter: The many reporters who used the Northern Star as an office from which to write and file. They were unfailingly gracious in asking our students for interviews and background information, and sensitive in understanding what we were dealing with.

At a workshop I attended recently, news videographer Seth Gitner of The Roanoke Times said this about interviewing people: “It’s always an honor when someone lets me into their life.”

Of all the journalistic lessons I’ve been reminded of through this whole, awful experience, that may be the best. When I interview someone, the honor is mine. No one is just a source, an eyewitness, or a skin color to satisfy perception of fairness and balance. When people agree to be interviewed, they trust us with their words, and often their emotions and their dignity. The best reporters appreciate and uphold this trust.

Certainly, our students who go on to become professional reporters will cover tragedy again. I think they’ll do so with empathy and sensitivity … knowing how it feels to be on the other side of those notebooks, cameras and microphones.