Visual Voice

On Monday, the story of the Virginia Tech shootings emerged mostly in the world of of electronic media -- the Web, radio, television, cell phones, e-mail, even instant messaging. Print newspapers got their turn to tell the story the next day. When you look at many of Tuesday's front pages, you'll notice that some of the same papers who did such a good job getting the stories online Monday failed to deliver a print edition building on what they had already published.

Newspapers are well suited to provide analysis and context. When events take place off the cycle of the printed publication, newspaper journalists get an opportunity to move the story forward.

Closest to the site of the massacre and staffed by students able to report first hand, Virginia Tech's campus paper, the Collegiate Times, created a clean, dramatic front-page that focused on the aftermath of the shootings. The headline, 'Heartache' and the lead photo, showing students holding hands in a circle, provide a strong contrast. The text block allows for a series of related sentences, summarizing the day's news and looking forward. The ample white space conveys the emptiness and the suffering of the Virginia Tech community.

The Roanoke Times, located near Virginia Tech, offers a strong counterpoint with its Tuesday front page. Editors wrote a screaming headline, 'Massacre on campus,' and selected a lead photo of policemen carrying a bloody shooting victim. The entire page conveys the pain and severity of the event. But I found it surprising that the paper devoted so much space to information and images that had been available on its own Web site, roanoke.com, for nearly twenty-four hours. The photo, made by part-time staffer Alan Kim, was all over the Internet and television news Monday afternoon and evening. The Times presumably had more photo choices than any other newspaper, so it was surprising to see editors sticking with an image most of their readers had already seen one place or another. To give its presentation even more impact, The Times went without a traditional narrative on the front page. The page does have references telling readers how to get involved and directing them to roanoke.com, but it doesn't seem to acknowledge the previous day's wall-to-wall television and online coverage. It did little to move readers beyond what they already know.

The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times all used the same photo and similar headlines. Each of these newspapers devoted the top half of its front page to the news from Blacksburg, Va., but also included other national and international news. In some ways, these pages feel more historic than helpful. The headlines are well written and descriptive, but act as if the readers had no idea what happened the day before. Newspapers may have an obligation to be the archives of tomorrow, but they also owe something to today's readers. These pages seemed to tip the balance toward history at the expense of service.

Tabloid newspapers took a decidedly different approach. Link, published by the Virginian Pilot, the Philadelphia Daily News and the Chicago Sun-Times focused on the grief of students and residents. Somber photography ruled these pages. The black background of Link's front page tied together the elements and added to the sorrowful mood making it one of the day's best.

Both The Chicago Tribune and The Tampa Tribune used time to tell the story. Key moments were explained directly below the headline to offer readers an organization of yesterday's events. As more information becomes known, these timelines offer newspapers a chance to put information in context and show that they are trying to provide more than just shocking headlines.

Two of North America's national newspapers provide the strongest contrast of how to report the shootings. Canada's National Post devoted the entire page to the story, reversing out its flag and all the text. The headline command attention; demanding that readers delve deeper into the stories. By contrast, The Wall Street Journal put the story atop its 'What's News' briefs.

Finally, many newspapers in the Northeast faced the challenge of balancing an important local story with a national story. The Sun Journal, of Lewiston, Me., ran the Virginia Tech shootings over its flag and devoted most the rest of the page to floods from the Nor'easter.

Overall, too few newspapers made prominent enough references to multimedia. Not enough used visual story-telling to move readers beyond what most of them already know. Most of the maps, diagrams and photos I saw failed to show readers more than what they could have seen on television or the Internet.

Admittedly it is difficult to find visual ways to add context and depth to breaking news stories in print. Newspapers are getting better at this, but coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings suggests how far we still have to go. 

Additional resources:
Page One Today: An archive of front pages from the Virginia Tech shootings, gathered by Poynter's David Shedden
News Designer: More than 50 front pages and comments by the blog readers
Newseum: Front pages from around the world.