A late congratulations

Kudos, props, etc., to the staff of the Washington Post for winning the 2008 Pulitzer Prize “for its exceptional, multi-faceted coverage of the deadly shooting rampage at Virginia Tech, telling the developing story in print and online.”

The Post also won the Virginia Press Association’s awards for its coverage of the shooting for both “Spot news writing” and “General news writing,” and scored a “Best in show” for is coverage as well: “Clearly the best writing over the entire event. A model of breadth, depth, clarity and sensitivity. This story was a local one for The Post and every other newspaper in Virginia. It was beautifully done.”

But extra kudos go to the Christiansburg-Blacksburg News-Messenger. The tiny, local paper took both first and second place in the VPA’s “Special sections or special editions” category for its extended coverage of the Tech tragedy. (Let’s get some names in here: Tonya Hall Bowyer, Amanda Bolen, and Lawson Koeppel.)

And finally, Alan Kim of the Roanoke Times — whom I’ve worked with and I know to be an absolutely terrific guy — took the VPA’s Best in Show award for this shot (at least I think it’s this shot) in the aftermath of the shooting.

I have to say, though, that I’m disappointed that the single best source of breaking news during the shooting — I was in the Roanoke Times newsroom at the time — was omitted. that was Planet Blacksburg, a student-run news site. It was where we turned to find out what was happening because it had all the information first.

The site got new media — it understood that it’s not about having photos and video and multimedia fluff, but it’s being willing to report rumor and unverified information as such. In a situation like that, waiting for confirmation on every piece of data would have been the wrong move — the old media move.

As long as readers knew the information was unconfirmed and may be revised, during chaos like that it’s best to get everything out there. Detailed, confirmed reporting could wait for the next day’s papers or for the evening news. But the Web can’t work like that, and the folks at Planet Blacksburg knew it. Bravo to them.