UNC student newspaper page goes viral with a powerful collection of texts from lockdown
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UNC Shooting
UNC professor Zijie Yan was fatally shot Aug. 28, 2023, in Chapel Hill, NC,, prompting an hourslong lockdown and questions about campus security. Yan’s graduate student has been charged with his murder. Here is ongoing News & Observer coverage about the killing, the campus response and the aftermath.
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As Emmy Martin was locked down Monday afternoon on the UNC-Chapel Hill campus, with police searching nearby for an “armed and dangerous person,” she was simultaneously terrified and clear-headed.
Her “pulse through the roof,” she already had identified her escape route. But as the editor-in-chief of The Daily Tar Heel, she also was reporting and directing coverage for the university’s independent student newspaper.
Sitting with fellow Daily Tar Heel journalists in the second-floor library of the Hussman School of Journalism and Media, Martin scrapped plans for a big preview section that was scheduled for the first weekend of college football. Instead, she knew that this particular front page of the weekly print edition had to do several things, namely represent the community it serves and act as a historical record of the lockdown that paralyzed the campus for three hours on Monday.
Two days after a professor was fatally shot in a science lab, a dramatic front page of UNC’s student newspaper on Wednesday drew national attention — including from President Joe Biden — for doing both of those things.
It’s a full page of text messages sent and received by students — mostly in black type, some in red. The page starts with “Are you safe? Where are you? Are you alone?” and ends with this: “Don’t stop texting me.”
“I shed many tears while typing up these heart-wrenching text messages sent and received by UNC students yesterday,” wrote Caitlyn Yaede, The Daily Tar Heel’s print managing editor, as she unveiled the front page on X, formerly known as Twitter, late Tuesday night.
Yaede’s tweet has gone viral, sparking outrage that students even had to exchange these texts with loved ones.
Wednesday night, Biden’s social media accounts posted a photo of his hand holding a phone with the front page image: “This was the front page of UNC-Chapel Hill’s Daily Tar Heel. No student, no parent, and no American should have to send texts like these to their loved ones as they hide from a shooter. I’ll continue to do all I can to reduce gun violence and call on Congress to do the same.”
Like any news outlet, the staff of The Daily Tar Heel sprung into action to report on the major story of the day: sorting through conflicting updates, making decisions about when to publish details of the investigation.
But unlike other news outlets, the students were living the fear and anxiety in real time, moment by moment. On the first day of the second week of classes of a new school year, they were huddled for three hours in classrooms and closets, unsure of what was happening in a classroom building in the central part of campus.
And for Martin, only two weeks into her job as editor-in-chief, the shooting and lockdown presented a moment that she considered she might have to address as a journalist, but didn’t expect she’d have to, and so soon.
“It just feels very surreal,” Martin told The News & Observer on Wednesday in a phone interview. “It’s been 48 hours, but it feels like it’s been a week.”
Coverage from lockdown
Martin, a junior from Wake Forest, said she began thinking of coverage as soon as she got the first Alert Carolina message about the “armed and dangerous person” at 1:03 p.m. Monday.
From her place in lockdown, not far from the site of the shooting, Martin and her staff updated the story at least 14 times into Tuesday, working sources and vetting rumors. Students posted live updates on X from a news conference with the chancellor and police chief.
“Atmosphere is tense, but folks are remaining calm,” Martin tweeted, though she acknowledged later that her own hands were shaking. “It’s been 2.5 hours since we received the first alert about an armed person on campus. Waiting for more information from UNC on what to do.”
On Tuesday, reporters and a photographer were dispatched to the Orange County Courthouse in Hillsborough for the suspect’s first appearance. They wrote about classes being canceled for the second day in a row.
Opinion columnist Zari Taylor, a Ph.D student and instructor, wrote about how today’s students have grown up in an era of mass shootings at schools and universities; those who survived the Sandy Hook Elementary mass shooting are now in college, Taylor wrote. These kinds of shootings, she wrote, have become the norm.
“Because these incidents occur so frequently, we can become desensitized and numb to them — even when they’re so close to home,” Taylor wrote. “We often want to resume a ‘normal’ after such occurrences, but how can we when there has just been so much loss? How much time is enough?”
How the Daily Tar Heel cover was created
The Daily Tar Heel publishes online daily and a weekly print edition. Martin and her staff, once reunited after lockdown, turned their attention to the print edition and what the front page would look like. At first, Martin discussed with Yeade about doing a full black page with just a few words.
“But then, once we sat down and we were trying to figure out what those words would be, nothing really felt right,” Martin said. “And nothing felt like it was correctly encompassing the full emotional toll of the over three hours of terror students felt on campus.
“We also didn’t want to editorialize,” she added. “That was a tough call there because, of course, we had personally experienced this. But we’re also journalists.”
Martin left the newsroom after 1 a.m. Monday with a black front page still waiting for some words. Back at home, she scrolled through her phone, seeing dozens of unanswered text messages from people who had reached out to check on her safety. She saw other students posting images on social media of their own panicked, frightened text messages that they had sent and received.
“That needs to be our cover,” she thought, texting the new idea to Yeade after 2 a.m.
The role of student journalism
Martin, balancing the role of editor and leader of staff morale, asked editors Tuesday morning to collect those text messages from that harrowing time. The messages poured in, and the front page took shape.
Not long after Yeade shared the image on social media, the post started gaining traction. Yeade had to turn off her phone alerts because her phone started glitching, Martin said. Prominent people on social media, including the likes of “Star Trek”’s George Takei, shared the image. The front page and the paper’s staff have been featured on national media outlets.
Martin said they never expected such an “overwhelming” response. But that response reassured a staff on edge that their work was important. It’s why student journalism is so vital to a college campus, Martin said.
“People are looking to us,” Martin said. “Because we’re students and not professionals, it feels closer to the heart, I think for many students.”
The Daily Tar Heel is a nonprofit newspaper that relies in part on donations to operate. Information on how to donate can be found at https://dailytarheel.com/page/donate.
This story was originally published August 29, 2023 at 5:15 PM with the headline "UNC student newspaper page goes viral with a powerful collection of texts from lockdown."
