The screen shot is a portion of the front page of the Daily Tar Heel, the independent student run newspaper at the University of North Carolina. The first edition, due out Wednesday, would have been a typical welcome back to campus edition, but then the semester began with the fatal shooting of a faculty member and a campus lockdown.
The staff knew they had to make a change and decided to devote the front page to a graphic layout of text messages going back and forth between students during the height of the crisis.
In moments of crisis, print publications can bring communities together by capturing and permanently preserving the feelings and emotions associated with the event. The Daily Tar Heel staff also demonstrated how print publications can use the unique asset of a physical product to capture readers’ attention and convince them to spend time looking deeper into stories important to their community.
