Sandy Hook: In One Mother’s Story, a Lesson For Journalists
Students from Sandy Hook Elementary School
returned to class this week, although they were relocated to
a different campus seven miles away. The Sandy Hook school in
Newtown, Conn., the site of one of the worst school shootings in
U.S. history, is likely to remain closed indefinitely. A gunman
broke into the school last month and killed 20 first graders and
six staff members, before taking his own life.
There’s been some remarkable reporting on the tragedy, but
nothing more poignant than a profile of Veronique Pozner, whose
son Noah was the youngest victim of the massacre. Writing for the
Jewish newspaper The Forward, reporter Naomi Zeveloff crafts an
intimate, painful, heart-wrenching
portrait of a grieving mother. It wouldn’t surprise me if her
work becomes required reading for students of narrative
journalism.
And equally valuable reading is Zeveloff’s explanation of how she
approached this difficult assignment,
as published by Columbia University’s Dart Society blog. Her
instincts as a journalist to “get” the story were balanced
against the potential risk of contributing to the family’s
grief by publishing more than they might have really
intended to share with a wider audience.
As Zeveloff explains:
“I worried about sharing what seemed to be the most personal, most painful details. Would I be unnecessarily exposing the family? Were these details gratuitously violent? Would I be shocking readers instead of informing them?”
While the story is graphic in its description of how badly
damaged Noah’s body was by the gunman’s bullets, she now believes
Noah’s mother shared those details to “give the public a clear
picture of the brutality of the Sandy Hook shooting,” Zeveloff
says.
On a related note, EWA recently held a webinar for reporters
discussing how to handle interviewing children, including
challenging situations such as Sandy Hook. The presenters
included Bruce Shapiro, executive director of the Dart Center for
Journalism & Trauma, Columbia Journalism School Professor LynNell
Hancock, and veteran education reporter Sarah Carr of the New
Orleans Times Picayune. You can watch the webinar
here.
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