Paths to two Pulitzers lead through Columbine High

By Will Corbin

Here’s the premise: Every great journalistic effort requires critical decisions at critical junctures. We asked editors to tell us about key decisions in the life of the fine journalism that contended for the 2000 Pulitzer Prizes. Those who responded represent winners, finalists and strong contenders for those prizes.

This is the first of a three-part series. This material was assembled largely through e-mail, so what you’ll read here is the relatively unfiltered words of the editors.

Thanks go to the Pulitzer jury chairs who offered up the strong also-rans in this year’s competition — and a special thanks to the editors who responded to our inquiry.

More resources and moving them faster

Frank Scandale, assistant managing editor/news of the Denver Post, on the Post’s winning entry in Breaking News Reporting on Columbine:

On April 20, 1999, I was at a growth conference in downtown Denver when the gunfire started at Columbine High School. It was the final day of the conference. For months, the AP bureau chief and I had been trying to get out for lunch.

This was the day. The AP’s office was a couple of blocks away. I waltzed out of the seminar and into the newsroom at AP to find the entire staff riveted on the television.

“Scandale, take a look at this,’’ said Peter Mattiace, the chief.

On the screen were SWAT guys and kids running helter-skelter.

“Where is this?’’ I asked. “Georgia?’’

“No. Littleton,’’ he said.

I ran out toward my office, my pager finally going off.

When I arrived in the office, the first critical decision had been made by Deputy Metro Editor Michelle Fulcher, dispatching about a dozen reporters to the scene. You can never catch up when you understaff the scene, but you can always call back troops if you have overstaffed it.

We think this was critical: that we moved faster than our competitors, and with more resources. Not knowing fully the magnitude of the situation, but instinctively knowing that the combination of guns, a school and kids required massive manpower, Fulcher and Assistant City Editor Arthur Hodges didn’t hesitate.

Within minutes we made the second critical decision. We doubled the staff sent to the scene and added more staff in the office to work sources to get yearbooks, blueprints of the school, phone numbers of students, parents and teachers.

With three televisions going over the city desk and chaos reigning in the community, we had to keep the city room relatively calm to handle this massive story. One of the most important moves we made was to quickly split up the story into themes and subjects, and then assign assistant city editors to each. Former editor Hodges took over on the victims, another ACE took the suspects, another the color stories, a fourth the main police story. Now, as information poured in from all venues — phone, TV, e-mail, in-person appearances, Fulcher and I knew where to direct the flow. Support staff also knew, so phone calls and information were funneled to the proper person.

Simultaneously, former Deputy State Editor Chris Lopez took all non-Columbine copy to himself and another assistant editor and moved it all way before deadline. This cleared the way for the newsdesk to divert all resources to the A section and the Columbine story, giving us more time to hone the first edition stories.

We were moving as a unit because we had practice. We had already gone through the Oklahoma City bomb trial, the JonBenet Ramsey murder, a quadruple murder of kids in a pizza place and a couple of Super Bowls, one of them Denver’s first, which included rioting.

Chemistry is important. We had that on our desk; Lopez, Fulcher and I had worked together for years. Most of the assistant city and state editors also had served a year or two on the desk. We knew each other’s strengths and weaknesses; we played to the former and compensated for the latter.

Once we had troops deployed to all the right spots, we huddled in the conference room to plan the paper. We had all the department heads and made sure we were covering the obvious and brainstorming the higher-plane stuff. We made sure one editor was in charge of getting mug shots of victims and key people. We made sure we were all over the chat rooms and Internet because this story could unfold more in that realm. We assembled two photo pages and made sure we secured color for them.

Next, we picked the reporter we knew could both assemble this massive amount of information and rewrite it into a moving piece. We picked Mark Obmascik, a veteran of big, tough stories who had proven he could weave a tale. He was respected by his colleagues and his editors. We basically put the biggest story of our careers into his capable hands. And he delivered. And one of the key writing tools he employed was to use lots of quotes from eyewitnesses, to let them tell the story instead of us trying to interpret and overwrite with purple prose. It was still a police story, and the best police stories are told via eyewitnesses.

As deadline ticked for first edition, each editor had a set of stories off the budget log. I was in charge of backreading everything to ensure consistency and check for holes in key stories.

We didn’t print what we did not know. Temptation was great to report sketchy information that would have been sensational but could not be confirmed as fact. This was against the backdrop of the hottest newspaper war in the country. We knew we would be measured against each other on this story, and within 24 hours, every major and minor news organization in the world would also be competing.

For instance, when word leaked that a delayed e-mail was sent by one of the killers predicting the carnage, the temptation was huge to go with the story. We could not confirm it to our satisfaction. We held off. Another paper went with it. They were wrong.

After the first deadline — we have only two editions, and the first deadline was pushed to about 9 p.m. — we called a meeting in the conference room of all editors and as many reporters as could come. That is were the brainpower came alive.

With Fulcher taking notes, I basically invited everyone to lay out what we knew and what we needed to know. This kept us ahead of the competition every day for two weeks. Instead of editors deciding unilaterally what should be covered and what should be reported, we made it a group effort with reporters spewing out all kinds of information not yet reportable but good to follow. We asked lots of questions, posed lots of theories and discarded the likely dead ends. We shared leads, tips and ideas. Then we assigned teams to tackle key areas, allowing reporters to concentrate on specific areas, understanding that colleagues were working on other areas. Reporters developed a system of sharing leads that gave us complete coverage.

After we retooled for the final edition, we held another round of meetings. It gave us the platform from which to launch early the next day. Reporters were not sleeping anyway, so many got rolling at dawn with their assignments in hand, their editors behind them 100 percent and an understanding of the full plan of the paper.

On Day Two, we also launched a Sunday team of reporters. Not only would we be running the story daily, but we quickly identified some larger issues, namely guns and the psychological effect this would have on students.

Next, we called in troops from our sister papers in California. This was a national story. We needed more people, more expertise.

This would be both an emotionally draining story and a physically taxing endeavor. I set up a system for every reporter and editor to take one day off that weekend. We needed folks to be as fresh as possible for what would certainly be a two-week non-stop pressure cooker. I think it paid off. A day away from the office to hug your family, ski, fish, sit and not be bombarded with the horror, was important.

On Day Two we also commissioned reporter Patricia Callahan to write a tick-tock of the day called “A Diary of Devastation.’’ She did an outstanding job, a pure and exquisite blend of reporting and writing that still stands as one of the great pieces of writing I have ever seen. Again, we went to our strength, a reporter with exceptional skills who absorbed the horror and heartbreak and then just told the world how horrible the event had been.

On Day Two I took control of the story budget, allowing Fulcher to concentrate on making field coverage decisions. I was able to keep the stories focused and direct traffic while backstopping Fulcher as she directed troops.

All the while we kept meeting. We met as a group at 8 a.m., then at least once or twice during the day, then again after the first edition, then again after the second. A few editors stayed late every night, crafting the story budget log, reading the wires, the other national papers, our competition.

Our police reporter, Marilyn Robinson, and our guns reporter, David Olinger, bore down for the nitty gritty coverage. Each night, those reporters managed to wrest from the hearts and minds of very tired, very emotionally exhausted detectives, the news nuggets that continued to shed light on what happened and gave The Denver Post the news lead of the day.

Our stories, thanks to those reporters and editors, were the grist of the television leads the next morning and the press conferences that began the days.

Our publisher attended some of those meetings, asking what we needed. Whatever it was — including moving some major advertisers out of the A section — was granted immediately. Support staff ordered food around the clock. You can’t underestimate the power of food. It showed the reporters and editors that we cared about them. And they responded.

Throughout, what kept the story in the higher plane was the fact that it could have happened to any one of us, any parent’s nightmare. It happened in suburbia, which we reminded folks and they reminded us. We quoted everyday people, and the story resonated. People talked about loving their children, kissing and hugging them and saying, “I love you’’ every day. It changed the way people viewed their lives. And our reporters focused on those stories.

I think that first week set the tone for the rest of the year. It was THE story of the year. It was the story that reporters and editors would forever measure their careers by. And they did it for the story, not for any future prizes. They did it because of what they are — newspeople.

And they did it very well.

It all starts with the people on the front lines

John Temple, editor of Denver’s Rocky Mountain News, on his photo staff’s winning entry in Breaking News Photography for coverage of the Columbine shootings.

Without an incredibly talented photo staff, we wouldn’t have had the opportunity to make critical decisions. It all starts with the people on the front line giving it their all. Then it’s our responsibility to make sure their work is handled with the same commitment.

A critical juncture came immediately. We cover breaking news aggressively, and when we learned of the shootings we quickly dispatched a number of photographers and reporters to the scene and to hospitals. It sounds obvious. But speed of response is critical. Without it we wouldn’t have had the images that raised difficult questions and elevated our coverage. This speed also included renting a helicopter. We were in the air over the school quickly, and as a result captured some of our most memorable moments. Without the speed and level of commitment, we wouldn’t have had the material to shape into Pulitzer-winning coverage.

We quickly decided to publish an extra. That raised a number of difficult issues for us, but it also set us into a publication mode quickly and probably helped us organize the massive volume of photos and stories we were generating. The toughest thing about the extra was getting photographs back to the newsroom. We still shoot mostly film and couldn’t get the film back from the scene. We couldn’t pull photographers from the story to bring back their film; there were so many vehicles flocking to the school that it was impossible to get out. Finally a photo editor rounded up film and sped (literally) back to the newsroom.

The first images were very bloody shots of students on gurneys. We were holding the presses but decided to wait even longer. Those pictures were too disturbing, especially since we didn’t know the condition of the kids. Then we found one of the images that was part of our Pulitzer entry: two boys embracing, an incredibly anguished look on the face of the one facing the camera. His expression seemed to capture the shock the community was feeling, and we ran with it.

I think that decision began setting the tone for our coverage. This event was happening in our community. While covering it aggressively, we did not want to distance ourselves from our community, we wanted to embrace it.

A critical decision early in the afternoon was to share the pictures with the world before we ran them in the News. Our photo staff moved about 80 pictures to the Associated Press and Scripps Howard News Service. The internal benefit was it helped us organize an overwhelming volume of material for the next day’s editions.

We took over our conference room and covered the table with photographs every night. In that room, the editor, managing editor and other editors merged the photo and story budgets to plot out the next day’s paper. Reporters and photographers joined us to talk about images or stories where they could bring special insight.

We were keenly aware of the need to avoid repetition in images. That has a dulling effect. By laying out the paper page by page in that way, we were able to heighten the impact of our coverage and see it as a whole, making sure it was clear, organized and complete. We always picked the Page One picture first. Then we picked photos for daily facing photo pages. Then we moved through the paper. This helped with headline writing, especially for the front page, because the theme or themes of the day emerged in that room.

We used the same room to view proofs and update coverage through the night. Communication is critical to successful coverage of major breaking stories, and this was one example of where such communication occurred. Another was a white board in the middle of the newsroom where the managing editor brainstormed every day with the staff.

Our approach to the story was to report and photograph aggressively and then to step back and consider carefully what we should publish. One of the most difficult decisions came on the first night, when we had a photograph from a helicopter of the body of a boy on a sidewalk outside the school. Students cowered behind a car nearby, with a cop pointing his rifle at the school. Although we didn’t know for sure that the boy was dead, we knew it was almost certain. We also knew that any parent would have been able to identify his or her son from that picture.

One thing I did the first day was to appoint a senior editor who had just joined the paper that day to stay outside the coverage and act as a conscience, questioner and taste arbiter. The discussions over that photograph took place over the course of about four hours. In the end, we ran it as the dominant image on a photo spread. It captured the horror of the day and we felt it was important to show it. But we placed it in the paper so that a reader would be prepared to run into it. I received very few complaints from the public.

The family initially was upset. When they picked up the paper in the morning they still hadn’t been told that their son was dead. I still think it was the right thing to do. But as a parent it was a very difficult decision, and I woke up the next day feeling awful about it. Then the boy’s mother told our reporter that the picture gave her comfort because she knew her son had died instantly. She carried it with her that first day.

One final decision that I think would benefit any paper: After the initial flurry of coverage (a month or so), the managing editor and I met with each department to discuss what we had learned from covering the story, what we had done well, what we could have done better and how we should change.

One of the suggestions from the reporters was that I write each family to open the door for them to communicate with the News. I wrote each family a personal letter, with my home phone number and every other way to reach me or the managing editor. This opened the door with a number of families and helped us cover the story more sensitively and with more depth.

Corbin is editor of the Daily Press in Newport News, Va.