April 17, 2007 12:00:00 am

Its all about too much information

By Kate Hawthorne

Today is a day I’d like to take a news break. Not as in interrupting our regularly scheduled programming for a breaking story, but a timeout from the breaking news story. Yeah, sometimes it feels like I’m in the wrong line of work. But precisely because of what I do, I know all about how the Virginia Tech story is going to play out.

We’re beyond the mere shock and horror and now we’re demanding answers. What happened? Why? Rumors have already been flying around the Internet, illustrated by sound and images from cellphones. Google ’em yourself – I’m on break.

Sorting fact from eyewitness imagination has added a new dimension to the reporting process, especially when overgrown bloggers like Matt Drudge exercise little or no news judgment before posting pronouncements founded on the flimsiest of speculation. Once they’re out there, it can be almost impossible to get the genie back in the bottle.

And what’s the all-important local angle? We’ll find one, all right, even if we have to go back to the parents of Columbine victims for expert color commentary. With absolutely no more information than anyone else, they are supposed to say something they haven’t said before about a situation thousands of miles away – and sound wise rather than bitter and disappointed that whatever they have worked for in memory of their children has once again been literally blown away in an instant – or two hours.

The next step will be blame, where many of us want to be right now. The responding officers “assumed” the person who killed two people in the dormitory had left campus, so felt no urgency to send up a flare to the campus or the community? Because it was “assumed” to be a domestic situation?

So then we get to the anger, and think of all the restraining orders that never stopped a bullet.

And underlying it all is that odd, unsettling and unfortunately familiar mixture of relief, guilt and joy that our loved ones are unharmed – this time – and sorrow for those who cannot say the same.