Poynter.org
“We were getting flooded with calls,” Collegiate Times Editor-in-Chief Zach Crizer tells Poynter's Mallary Tenore. “We told them our policy is to not give interviews to other media outlets during breaking news because we want all of our people to write for us. The New York Times offered the opportunity to contribute to a story (instead of interviewing us), so we got quotes for them and did some reporting.” In the end, some of the students did interviews with other news outlets. || Related: Newspaper's Twitter account grew from 2,000 to 18,000 in hours (The New York Times)

In 2007, Amie Steele was editor-in-chief of the Collegiate Times, responsible for leading the team covering the shooting that killed 32 people. At the time, NPR profiled her and the paper's work.

"Collegiate Times editor-in-chief Amie Steele has gotten little or no sleep in the past 24 hours, but she’s still on fire,” said Larry Abramson. “The stars of the journalism firmament have alighted here. But this petite, 21-year-old junior is the busiest and the most popular. Her pink cell phone seldom leaves her ear.”

Steele's journalism future was short; she worked at The Free Lance-Star in Fredericksburg, Va., from May 2008 to February 2010. "The unfortunate economic status of newspapers had me head in another direction, and now I'm working for the Government Accountability Office in Washington, D.C.," she told me. Interestingly, her experience with national media in 2007 changed her impression of journalism, "but not in a way you would expect." (more...)

News organizations from around the country are using social media to locate witnesses and obtain interviews and photos of today's campus shooting at Virginia Tech. "Call our newsroom if you know anyone that goes to Virginia Tech," tweeted Buffalo, New York television station WKBW.  "Hey #vatech - looking to speak & get updates from students on campus," wrote CBS News producer Joe Danielewicz. Meanwhile, the media pounced on a Flickr page of photos from the photo editor of the student newspaper, the Collegiate Times.The images of the crime scene and of police activity attracted requests for republication rights from CNN, the New York Post, NPR, Australia's News Limited, and other news organizations. (The newspaper eventually posted contact information for media seeking reuse rights.)

The website of Virginia Tech's independent student newspaper, The Collegiate Times, struggled with traffic as people sought information on a campus shooting Thursday. For a while, the home page redirected to a sparsely designed "breaking news" page with a Twitter widget at the top and photos below. Shortly after 2 p.m. ET, the Times tweeted and posted to its Facebook page, "We are working to get our website back up. Just check Twitter and Facebook for constant updates." The New York Times' Brian Stelter tweeted, "Paper's feed gained 10,000+ followers in 30 min."

Later, the home page redirected to a fast-loading, WordPress-powered gallery of photos from the incident.

Mashable is updating a Storify with news and photos, including The Collegiate Times' first tweets on the shooting.

The New York Times' Twitter list for the shooting mostly follows journalists, but it includes two students: Michael Morrison, who's studying electrical engineering, and senior Tauhid Chappell, who is majoring in electronic/print journalism, according to his Twitter bio. The Collegiate Times' editor-in-chief, associate news editor, and a sports editor are also tweeting.

The Collegiate Times was apparently the first news outlet to break news of the Virginia Tech massacre in 2007. That day, the news site changed to a similar publishing approach as it covered that school shooting: (more...)

MSNBC.com Sometime after he killed two people in a dormitory but before he fatally shot 30 more in a classroom building Monday morning, Cho Seung-Hui sent NBC News a rambling communication and videos about his grievances. The network turned the "disturbing" material over to the FBI and said it wouldn't immediately disclose its contents.

Los Angeles Times Reporters for the Virginia Tech student newspaper, the Collegiate Times, continued to report and write stories even as phones failed and police evacuated them from their offices. "We knew there was going to be some kind of reliance on us, and we couldn't let people down," says managing editor Joe Kendall. Reporter Saira Haider, who lost a good friend in the massacre, says: "I don't want to be biased -- I just want to report. It is kind of hard to separate the two -- the emotional side and the news side." > Ex-Collegiate Times staffer: It's surreal to see this happening (Keynoter) > Cable newscasts doing little but guessing and second-guessing (USAT) > Bianculli: Cable news regained a bit of its focus, if not its soul (NYDN) > CNN's all-day average viewership of 1.4M was up 186% Monday (ChiTrib) > Reporters at VT should be guided more by etiquette than ethics (Slate)

If you ever had a doubt about how important it is for your
newsroom to be able to tap into user-generated content, the Virginia Tech story
will change that. Look at this collection from CNN’s I-Report.

Students text messaged one … Read more