University of Alabama Student Reflects On Covering Tuscaloosa Tornado

[Syrinx]

On a weekday afternoon in late April 2011, Crimson White editor-in-chief Victor Luckerson heard tornado sirens. He left the Crimson’s newsroom near Bryant-Denny Stadium and went down into the office building’s basement. Minutes later, he watched on local TV news as parts of Tuscaloosa were leveled by a historic torrent of wind and rain. And then he got to work.

In the week following the storm, Luckerson led the Crimson White staff at UA on a publishing spree that included more than 100 articles and roughly 30 multimedia features from numerous bases of operation.

Among their prodigious output, the team put together a print edition, without advertisements, a week after the storm. The edition featured profiles about affected communities – and personally delivered copies to locations around the city. The amount of the paper’s Twitter followers doubled. Their weekly website hits ratcheted up from 6,000 to 450,000. MSNBC, Dateline and NBC Nightly News featured their photos. They even interviewed Brian Williams and Charlie Sheen for special video reports.

In the Q&A below, Luckerson reflects on his own experiences dealing with the disaster and what’s next for the city and school as the rebuilding and healing continue.

http://www.usatodayeducate.com/staging/index.php/blog/university-of-alabama-student-reflects-on-covering-tuscaloosa-tornado%5C

[vdub2197]

1. interesting.