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How tragedy coverage differed
(by Dave Lange - March 14, 2012)
COUNTY LINE, BY DAVE LANGE
How tragedy coverage differed
On Feb. 27, a large contingent of professional journalists from Northeast Ohio and far beyond converged on Chardon, the Geauga County seat.
In its next two editions, Ohio's largest metropolitan daily newspaper, which regularly reports the news of Cuyahoga County and frequently reports on the six bordering counties, carried bylined stories about the Chardon High School shootings written by 12 of its own reporters and pictures taken by five of its photographers. I do not know how many editors and designers it took to prepare the Cleveland daily's impressive coverage of the tragedy.
The entire news staff of our three community weeklies -- the Chagrin Valley Times, Solon Times and Geauga Times Courier -- consists of eight full-time journalists, including myself, a features editor, sports editor and chief photographer, one part-time reporter and three freelance photographers.
We know the 22 communities and eight public school districts in our coverage area very well, because we're there all the time. While our staff reports the news of our communities better than anyone else week in and week out, when a major story breaks, we cannot match the reportage of the major media. First of all, television and radio coverage can hit the airwaves almost immediately, and the daily papers come out the next day. We publish just once a week. Secondly, we don't have a dozen reporters and five photographers.
Of course, our one full-time reporter devoted to covering the Chardon area, Joseph Koziol Jr., who happens to live in Chardon and grew up in nearby Newbury, immediately was on what probably has been the biggest story of his life. By the time our newspapers were ready for publication the following day, he had completed two major stories about the shootings. Those pieces, which dominated the front page of our Geauga Times Courier, under the banner headline, "Dark day for Chardon," were in addition to six other significant articles he wrote for that week's edition.
We also assigned Joan Demirjian, our reporter in southwestern Geauga County, where she is a longtime resident, to write a story on gun violence, mostly from the perspective of local police, and Anthony Lange, a Geauga County native who covers sports and education, to write a story on the reaction to the Chardon news from neighboring school superintendents. Those stories, which headed up our Chagrin Valley Times front page, under the banner headline, "Nightmare hits close to home," were in addition to 14 other significant articles they wrote that week. The story on school superintendents' reaction also ran on the front page of our Solon Times.
Our Geauga County freelance photographer, Keli Boatwright, was on the scene and took the photos for our Geauga and Chagrin front pages.
On that dreadful week, our graphics staff obtained photos of the five victims, all of which were printed on the front page of our Geauga Times Courier. We were unable to access one of those photos in time to meet the earlier printing deadline for the Chagrin Valley Times, so only the other four appeared with the story on an inside page.
Being community newspapers, we seldom include Chardon news in our Chagrin Valley and Solon editions. This was a tragic exception.
Under the circumstances, I couldn't be prouder of our staff.
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