Friday afternoon was a defining moment in The Pacer’s coverage of local events that matter to the campus, as three of our staff collaborated to cover, write and photograph the events of a campus lock down following the armed robbery of a Martin bank.
If you haven’t read the story, go read it here.
The story unfolded as follows, from my perspective:
I was in The Pacer office, reading about Berlin in the Cold War for a research project, when I heard Tomi Parrish, our adviser, putting her key in the office door. (I assumed it was Tomi because everyone else either knocks or uses their Skyhawk Card.)
“Keep the doors locked,” she said. “And is the back door locked?”
I assumed that because Spring Break is quickly approaching, she wanted to make sure the office would be safe during the break.
“Did you not get the text message?” Tomi asks.
“What message?”
At that point, Tomi showed me her phone which received a text message from Public Safety (UTM’s campus police) stating that a tan Jeep had been found on campus that was linked to an armed robbery. I had not gotten the message, and knew there had to be something wrong with the text-message system. I even got on Banner to make sure I had opted-in to the highest level of warnings.
So I began preparing to get a breaking news story online, but first I needed to call Public Safety to obtain more information. As I was about to call from the office phone, Will York called my cell phone as he was driving to Union City and asked where we stood. I caught him up, and then he proceeded to fill me in on more information. He had already called Public Safety and dictated both the details up to that point and the beginnings of the story that I posted minutes later.
So far so good, I thought to myself.
Then Jon-Michael St. Amant (our advertising manager/jack of all trades) called to tell me he was “in the field,” getting quotes and such. A few phone calls later, he also dictated some information to me, which I added in to (I think) the third update of the story. By this time, I had called Regions to make sure there were no injuries during the robbery.
Calls to both the Martin Police Department and Public Safety had turned up no new information, but I had their guarantees that they would let us know when they had more information. At this point, I also made calls to my mother to let her know everything is fine, to my sister who was working at Martin Primary School wondering when her students’ parents will be able to leave UTM and to my geography professor who I should been meeting to discuss the Berlin research.
Eventually we came off of lock down and we put up the sixth update to the story from Tomi’s office. Will called back to let me know he was on his way up to the office. He took over and I headed to my meeting. In the mean time, Jon-Michael had been to Regions Bank to take photos. Will updated the story at least three more times over the course of the afternoon, and also supplied information to the Associate Press to fill in their story, which was picked up by many TV and online news outlets around the country.
As Will said in an e-mail to our staff after things had quieted down, “It was a big story, and we handled it well. By the afternoon, our story appeared on the main Web pages for The Tennessean, The Commercial Appeal and others. It was also featured on Web sites for more than 100 national news outlets like CNN.”
Some of you might be asking why I wrote this lengthy blog, wondering if this was written to pat The Pacer on the back. I don’t pay special kudos to our staff very often for the day-in, day-out work that we do, but this is one special case.
This blog’s was created to keep our readers informed of the how and why we do what we do, and again this situation was certainly worth describing for those who do not know how we operate.
Finally, this post was also written to provide thought material for the few (or many, I don’t know) on campus who look at The Pacer as a “learning lab” which produces shoddy work and irrelevant drivel. This story –and countless others –that we put out speaks to the quality of work that we try to uphold, and hopefully that work shows how seriously we take our jobs.
Now that all the tense moments are over– here’s wishing a safe and (hopefully) warm Spring Break to everyone.
Matt Cook
Executive Editor
The Pacer
