Virginia Tech Student Editor No Longer In News Business

Great interview with Amie Steele, who supervised coverage of the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre for the student newspaper. Breaks my heart that she left the news business after the economic downturn (or you might argue the business left her), though her gig at the U.S. Government Accountability Office doesn’t sound too shabby. 

I’m most struck by the way coverage of the massacre inspired rather than tainted her love of journalism. Watching professional journalists botch things up (reporting rumors as fact, shoving cameras in students’ faces) made her realize the business needs better journalists and more of them. 

Newsrooms need the presence of heroes like Steele if they’re going to survive into the future. If I ran a newspaper,* I’d hire her in a blink.

* Don’t give me any ideas 

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— 9 notes
  1. journo-geekery reblogged this from sasquatchmedia
  2. ronbailey said: I live like 45 minutes from Blacksburg. Amie is something of a hero to me. I was reminded of that fact again when she stood up for the current Collegiate Times staff after they caught flack for their coverage of last week’s campus shootings.
  3. sasquatchmedia posted this
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