Resources for Blog Posts, Homicide & Mass Shooting, Children & Youth

Two people are dead and four critically wounded following a shooting earlier today at Marysville-Pilchuck High School in Washington State.

Experts debate whether the mainstream media's use of the 911 phone calls from the Sandy Hook School shootings provide additional value to the public, or if they represent a grotesque exercise in shock-value. 

In advance of the Dart Center’s day-long symposium on the issue in conjunction with the Tow Center for Digital Journalism, Dart Center Executive Director Bruce Shapiro will participate in a panel discussion, “Covering Tragedy: The Media and Trauma After Newtown.”

Five years after a gunman opened fire on a classroom of 120 at Northern Illinois University, killing five, former student journalists reflected on their experiences covering the tragedy in an article for the Rockford Register Star.

A documentary project follows the homicide epidemic in Chicago, where last year, 243 people under the age of 25 were killed. The city now leads the nation in homicides.

Following last month’s tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School, WSHU Public Radio News Director Naomi Starobin shares lessons learned from her newsroom in Fairfield County, Connecticut.

In the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings, Dart Center staff and affiliates were in the news, speaking about best practices for journalists covering tragedy involving children, and how to move forward.

Following Friday's shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, the Dart Center's executive director Bruce Shapiro has been asked by multiple news outlets to discuss the ethics of interviewing children in the midst of tragedy.

Dark, cold, grey, brooding Helsinki. This was the backdrop for Violence in the Networked Society, an international conference hosted by University of Helsinki’s Communication Research Center on Nov. 6 and 7, 2009. It was a particularly poignant setting, because in 2007 and again in 2008 Finland was the site of school shootings that together left 18 students murdered. In this highly literate and socially conscious society, the sense of communal grief was profound — a national trauma.

Yesterday, for the 10th anniversary of the most infamous school shooting, the Dart Center published a package for student journalists and educators on covering similar incidents; today, we took a look around the web and through our archive for more.