Thoughts from a Virginia Tech Graduate
Talk of the Nation's webmaster Paul Heltzel, a Virginia Tech alumnus, has this personal account of yesterday's events unfolding...
Around lunchtime on Monday, I told the news shift editor at NPR.org I could cover for him while he grabbed something to eat. Watching the wires for just an hour was no big deal. I kidded with him and said: "What's the worst that can happen?"
Soon after, like a cruel joke, I saw a wire report that someone was shot and killed on the Virginia Tech campus. Then, quickly the report was revised... the wires reporting dozens killed with nearly as many wounded. I scrambled to set up the breaking news on our front page.
From 1992-1993, I edited the college newspaper at Virginia Tech, the Collegiate Times. Yesterday, I continually pinged my old college paper's web site. The staff was writing quick descriptions of what was happening on campus. All the traffic they were getting was crushing their server.
I was assigned to work with Noah Adams, who was writing a short Web story about the Virginia Tech campus. "I keep thinking, it feels like the day Kent State became the Kent State," I told him. It was heart breaking.
Paul Heltzel is an associate producer at NPR.org.
11:50 AM ET | 04-17-2007 | permalink
