• by Erik Sass , April 17, 2007

The massacre which claimed the lives of 33 students, staff, and faculty at Virginia Tech Monday morning was not only the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history-but it likely was the most closely documented, thanks to students who corresponded with the press during and after the tragedy. The implications are startling, as the news media gains a window into emerging situations previously limited to law enforcement.

According to an article posted on BBC.com, "Some of those locked down inside the university buildings were using the Internet to try to glean information about what was happening and many e-mailed the BBC News website." Meanwhile, student Jamal Albarghouti provided local NewsChannel 8 with a cell phone video of police activity in which dozens of shots were fired. As of Monday evening this cell phone footage, picked up by CNN, was still the only live action video record of the events.

As chaos gripped the campus, students also used cell phones and text messaging to notify each other of the danger. The Washington Post reported that one junior, Matteo del Ninno, was first notified of the shootings by his girlfriend via a text message received at 10:10 a.m. The Washington Post reported that one student warned his freshman calculus class that loud noises outside were probably gunshots after pulling up an email from school administrators via a wireless Internet connection.

In the immediate aftermath, students were interviewed via a number of channels, with many international news organizations gathering eyewitness accounts via cell phone. Student journalists reported breaking news via the Internet, and international news orgs picked up reporting from Amie Steele, editor in chief of Virginia Tech's newspaper, as well as Anthony Della Calce, the executive editor of Planet Blacksburg, a school Web site, and Michael Connor, a student journalist from nearby Radford University.

The free flow of information between students and outsiders was especially notable in light of the university's failure to notify them after the first shooting, in which two students were killed in a campus dormitory. Kirsten Bernhards, 18, was quoted in The New York Times as saying the first notification came via email, more than two hours later: "I was leaving for my 10:10 film class," she said. "I had just locked the door and my neighbor said, 'did you check your email?'" There were also reports that the university Web site was down through portions of the morning. Jason Piatt was quoted on CNN.com: "I'm pretty outraged that someone died in a shooting in a dorm at 7 in the morning and the first e-mail about it, no mention of locking down campus, no mention of canceled classes."