The weight we carry: college journalism’s untold grief 

The first time I ever had to carry grief that did not belong to me was the day I began to report on survivors of former University of Michigan Athletics doctor Robert Anderson. Over a span of 37 years, more than 950 victims reported thousands of incidents of sexual abuse and misconduct at the hands of Anderson, remaining as likely the most sexual abuse allegations against a single person in United States history. 

There is an untold grief in reporting this kind of trauma, in reporting the tragedies that affect our schools and communities — the people we love and know — and what they ultimately leave behind. In time, even grief that does not belong to us has a way of becoming our own. 

College journalists are especially vulnerable to the weight of reporting. The world sees them as too young to understand the heaviness of grief or to report on the shootings that fracture their campuses, the homicides that destroy their student bodies, the bomb threats and sexual abuse scandals that define the way they reckon with themselves. But oftentimes, long after national news outlets have left, when press conferences become a rarity and towns begin to quiet again, student journalists and student-run newspapers become the last to remain, to understand, to painstakingly cover all that happens in between. And at a cost few are ever willing to make. What becomes of college journalists in the face of collective grief? What does it mean to grieve, to process, to become angry, to be in pain, to know joy and love and healing as a journalist first, and as a student last? 

I’ve spent the past month researching college newspapers across the country, and more importantly, college newspapers that found themselves at the forefront of national tragedies — those that have had to contend with what it meant to no longer feel safe in your own libraries, classrooms, newsrooms and homes. Over the past few weeks, I spoke to Ava MacBlane, Editor in Chief of The Cavalier Daily at the University of Virginia; Haadiya Tariq, Editor in Chief of The Argonaut at The University of Idaho; and Jasper Smith, Editor in Chief of The Hilltop at Howard University. These are their stories. This is the weight they carry.

The Cavalier Daily, The University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Va. 

The Cavalier Daily — The CD or The Cav, for short — is the University of Virginia’s independently-run student newspaper. It employs approximately 400 staffers and is led by Editor in Chief Ava MacBlane. The Cavalier Daily’s offices are located in the basement of Newcomb Hall, a student center that also houses the campus’s main dining hall. Staff sometimes take long naps on a couch chock-full of Squishmallows. A life-size cut-out of Will Ferrell sits in an odd corner, and there are lopsided frames of old newspapers from decades ago hung on the walls. Meetings are held in an area fondly dubbed “The Office” and on Fridays, when the production schedule is pleasantly light, the Copy staffers spend hours at one of the few empty tables gossiping about the day’s latest happenings. The newsroom here is well-loved. It’s the kind of place people visit just because they can.

On Sunday, Nov. 13, 2022, University of Virginia students and football team members Devin Chandler, D’Sean Perry and Lavel Davis Jr. died after a gunman opened fire on a bus returning from a University of Virginia class trip to Washington, D.C. Two other students were wounded. A shelter-in-place warning issued a campus-wide “Run, Hide, Fight” alert that lasted well into the next morning. Students spent the whole night cramped into libraries and a variety of campus and academic buildings, trapped in an uncomfortable state of limbo and a terribly unsettling cloud of fear, in search of a reason why. 

MacBlane, who was the Managing Editor of The Cavalier Daily at the time, spent the entirety of the next 72 hours following the shooting, on the ground reporting. She missed meals and sleep, and much of her grief was experienced as a journalist first. Reporting on her community became one of the only ways she carried her grief, or rather, the only way her job as a student journalist allowed her to.

“You want to feel connected to people and to your community, but you can’t because you’re still the media,” MacBlane told me. There is a heaviness that comes with reporting on fellow peers who left the world so violently, a half-removed kind of grieving. 

While it became the sole responsibility of MacBlane and The Cavalier Daily to print the victims’ names, their hometowns, what they studied, the lovely, wonderful tiny things that made them who they were, there is also the realization that the journalists are students, too. They might have run into the victims of the shooting somewhere in line at a coffee shop or in the library, or the victims might have picked up a copy of The Cavalier Daily, because Devin Chandler, D’Sean Perry and Lavel Davis Jr. were here as fellow students, and now after a senseless act of violence, they no longer were. 

The Cavalier Daily’s news team fell apart after the shooting. MacBlane, former Editor in Chief Eva Surovell and members of the Senior team carried the brunt of reporting, spending hours in the newsroom, often until dark fell.

“I don’t really know, there’s nothing you can really say,” MacBlane confided. “You don’t know how to report when three people at your school die.” Past alumni brought cookies and pizza to the newsroom, and staffers gathered together. They all had been consumed by a terrifying act of violence that fractured their school and changed the University of Virginia as they knew it, but at least they had each other. 

After the shooting, MacBlane took photos for hours on end. She captured pictures of people leaving flowers, of people painting the Beta Bridge — a campus staple — and mostly, of collective grief and healing in action. But still, MacBlane felt out of place, like she was intruding on something she couldn’t entirely be a part of.

“The processing of my grief was done behind a camera. I still didn’t really feel like a student.” MacBlane said. “I called my mom a few days later, and it was the first time I really cried.” 

While The Cavalier Daily aimed to cover the shooting with great care, affording students the choice to reflect on the shooting if they so wished, national media did not. Journalists from outside outlets covered the shooting aggressively, zeroing in on any student they could find for a comment. And as the days passed, as quickly as they had arrived, they left, leaving a campus so deeply attempting to recover. 

“You just have to keep going,” MacBlane said. “When the big media trucks leave, when The Washington Post leaves, it is us, the student-run and local small newspapers that pick up the pieces left behind.”

***

The Argonaut, The University of Idaho, Moscow, Idaho 

The Argonaut is The University of Idaho’s student-run newspaper. It is home to approximately 25 staffers and led by Editor in Chief Haadiya Tariq. Its offices are located on the third floor of the Bruce M. Pitman Center, and on late production nights, tables are usually cluttered with dummy layout pages, junk food wrappers and cans of emptied energy drinks. The newsroom is warm and bright and sometimes staffers project the Super Bowl or Christmas movies on any empty wall they can find during the holidays. 

On Sunday, Nov. 13, 2022, University of Idaho students Kaylee Goncalves, Xana Kernodle, Ethan Chapin and Madison Mogen were violently murdered in their off-campus residence, spurring a weeks-long investigation that captivated the country. Within one day of the homicides, rumors about how a man dressed in black had killed four students began swirling on Yik Yak, an anonymous messaging app. That was the nature of a school like The University of Idaho; it was the way things were. Moscow was the special sort of place where everyone seemed to know everyone else, and everything in one way or another was intrinsically connected. 

The Argonaut was one of the first news sources at the house where the homicides had occurred. Tariq lived just down the road from it, and one of her staffers knew the victims personally. Soon, the house on 1122 King Road became something no one could ever seem to get away from. It was profoundly unforgettable, nestled one minute away from Greek Row and on particularly clear days, visible through the pine trees from campus. The first press conference, held at the Moscow Police Department’s offices, was bursting at the seams, the room far too small and ill-prepared to accommodate the journalists that had flown in to report on the homicides. It had been seven years since Moscow last recorded a homicide; the town had always been a quiet one and generations of families had loved the land and called it home.

Tariq didn’t attend her classes for the entire week. “My academics were completely on pause, the rest of my life on pause,” she said. “I just spent that whole week reporting … it’s more intimate too when you’re a student and you know the people who know (the victims) them. You can’t escape it, it becomes the whole thing you’re doing.”

Nearly half of the student body did not return to campus after Thanksgiving break. Things were different after the homicides; emptier and hollower. One afternoon, when Tariq tried to conduct street interviews, students were uncharacteristically hostile.

“You know even though I’m here as a student and a journalist, they just see the journalist part” Tariq said.  “And that was really difficult to deal with.”

From the day the homicides occurred through the end of the term, Tariq spent most of her time reporting. It wore her down, in the way that attempting to understand and carry the entire grief of a community does, and it was something that even seasoned journalists with careers spanning decades could never truly understand. 

“One thing I remember; when we had the indoor memorial for the victims, I decided not to go, we had other reporters covering it, but I just could not be there.” she said. “I never in a million years would have thought that I would cover something this big. I thought the pandemic would have been the huge defining moment of my college journalism experience. You really only experience something like this once in your career as a journalist, and it’s usually not when you’re only 21.” 

Last December, the Moscow Police Department finally apprehended and charged a suspect with the murders of Kaylee Goncalves, Xana Kernodle, Ethan Chapin and Madison Mogen. Coverage of the homicides, theories of why someone could have possibly committed such a crime, who the victims were — and the way they lived and loved — soon bled into coverage of the ensuing trial. But for now, Moscow is still in mourning, and The Argonaut is still here.

“We will continue covering the trial, it’s something we care about a lot,” Tariq said. “We can fill the gaps that national media can’t address. They’re gone, they’re not here anymore, they’re not on the ground in Moscow anymore. They’ll be back for the trial, but not for what’s going to happen in between. We’re going to be here. They’re not.” 

***

The Hilltop, Howard University, Washington, D.C. 

The Hilltop is Howard University’s student-run newspaper. Co-founded by Zora Neale Hurston and Louis Eugene King in 1924, it employs 57 staffers, led by Editor in Chief Jasper Smith. The Hilltop is one of a kind and it stands today as the first and only daily newspaper at a Historically Black College or University in the country. And after months of halted production and delays due to the pandemic, The Hilltop has just begun to live again. Staff have started to trickle back into the newsroom for more than just meetings, late-night editing and last minute production. And more than anything else, it’s clear that The Hilltop has always been the sort of newsroom that will forever change your life, if you let it. There is so much joy in leading The Hilltop. Homecoming, one of Howard’s most beautiful and celebrated traditions, has always been an honor for journalists to cover — and Smith has a soft spot for The Hilltop’s special front page layouts each year.   

On Aug. 26th, 2022 for the second time in 48 hours, Howard University received its eighth bomb threat of the year. Students evacuated from Howard Plaza East and West Towers, two on-campus residence dorms, in the early hours of morning. JD, one of The Hilltop’s reporters and at the time, was in the towers and called Smith immediately. At 3 a.m., their first instinct was to discuss the reporting process. After all, this wasn’t the first time either one of them had had to cover a bomb threat, and it seemed like they had almost implicitly solidified the most efficient routine to secure as many interviews and photographs as possible.

“It wasn’t until after we had finished reporting that I stopped to ask myself and JD … wait are you okay? Am I okay?” Smith said. “We’re just students too.” The repeated bomb threats had come to define the way they reported on these kinds of things, and the weight of what they had been truly asked to carry. 

To report for The Hilltop, to become the voice of one of the illustrious institutions in the country, and various communities in Washington, D.C. is to also sometimes reckon with days of repeated traumatic events. In the span of the same week, on the last day of Black History Month, Howard University received yet another bomb threat, and a student committed suicide. Reporting, for Smith, became a means of coping, of understanding and reconciliation. And perhaps the only means that her job could ever give her. Yet, there never seemed to be enough room to carry every ounce of grief.

“Your universities are kind of like your playground, and in turn you get almost desensitized, it only hits you all at once after the reporting is done,” Smith said.  

“Journalism is a very thankless job, people don’t pay attention to the byline. You’re not doing it for you,” Smith said. “It just affirms the love I have for what I do and that what I’m doing is so much bigger than me. You can’t ever quit because there’s so much that depends on us working together.” 

***

There is love in college journalism, love in late nights spent in the newsroom, in the special sort of rush that comes with a byline, in creating something that is meant to outlive so many of us long after we have gone. But there is also grief too, and in time, it has become an unavoidable condition of what it means to be a journalist. Reporting on tragedy and trauma, the pain and anger, the love and loss that define the communities we serve, sometimes becomes the only feasible means of grieving, and mostly, the inevitable weight we carry.

Statement Deputy Editor Sarah Akaaboune can be reached at sarahaka@umich.edu.