Filling in the missing pieces

When you read our newspaper tomorrow, you will notice two things. Our front page will cover the grief of students mourning their friends. Our photographers try to maintain a strict balance between covering news and respecting those in pain.

You will also notice something missing: names. While many larger media outlets are releasing names of students involved in the fire, we have chosen not to.

There is no conspiracy. We operate independently of the university. Andrew Sorensen does not scare me. Student Media has not been hushed up. No one is censoring us.

We chose not to run names for a simple fact: accuracy. We would be doing our students a disservice if we did not personally call each family and confirm names. While we could always copy and paste from other stories, it is our duty as journalists to find out our own facts.

It is hard to call families for us, because unlike other outlets, we don’t have a 10-man team working for 8 hours on one story. We only have three or four students sporadically throughout the day. Even I had to go to class today for a presentation.

This information is widely available to those who seek it. Instead of trumpeting the fact that we know names, we will instead present profiles about these students from those closest to them.

If you would like to aid us in remembering their lives, please email me or call my office at 803.777.3914. More than likely I will be there all day, putting together the pieces.

Jackie Alexander

Editor in Chief

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