How UNLV’s student newspaper staff covered the Las Vegas shooting

Sunlight pours into the third-floor office suite.

It illuminates the workspace of the Scarlet and Gray Free Press — a place abuzz with the clack, clack, clack of keyboards, phones ringing, staff meetings and a whiteboard scribbled with story ideas.

UNLV’s weekly student newspaper mirrored that of regional and national news outlets in the days after the Oct. 1 mass shooting on the Las Vegas Strip.

“By around 7 or 8 in the morning on Monday we had an article up saying there was a shooting,” Editor-in-Chief Bianca Cseke said. “Pretty much all day Monday we were working nonstop, trying to get information verified, figuring out what our plan would be to cover it throughout the week and how we would put together the issue so that it would still be relevant a week or two later.”

After checking in with her fellow student journalists to ensure everyone was safe, Cseke headed into the office and mobilized her staff.

“When I walked in on Monday morning, I went straight to Bianca and said, ‘Where do you need me?’” staff writer Terrel Emerson said. “She said the Mandalay Bay. I was like, ‘Say no more.’”

Managing Editor Blaze Lovell said he skipped classes the week of the shooting.

“I can retake a class,” he said. “I can’t redo this issue.”

Inside the edition

The 34-page issue — more than double the size of a typical edition — hit campus newspaper racks on Oct. 9.

“This is probably the biggest we’ve had — ever,” Cseke said.

It rivaled the work the staff put in last year covering the third presidential debate, which was held at UNLV.

“We thought it was crazy last year when we covered the presidential debate here, but that was like a dress rehearsal for what we had to do last week,” Lovell said.

Cseke’s first priority was to try to find anyone from UNLV who was affected by the shooting. The staff did.

On Pages 4 and 5, staff writers tell the stories of former UNLV student Quinton Robbins, one of the 58 people killed in the shooting, current student Karessa Royce and assistant hockey coach Nick Robone.

A photo collage of the concertgoers who died follows on the next three pages.

On Page 12, Assistant Sports Editor Faryn Duncan recounts her experience at the Route 91 Harvest festival: “I saw men walking with people thrown over their shoulders and lifting people over the fences and barriers to safety,” she writes.

The next few pages are sprinkled with opinion writing and several stories focused on UNLV’s response to the shooting.

“We’re proud we were able to cover the issues that a lot of UNLV students were affected by directly,” Cseke said.

The front-page image — a photo of the 58 crosses at the “Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas” sign, and the headline, “Resilient in the Face of Tragedy,” also took serious thought.

“I thought it was the most powerful (image), and represented how the community came together,” Cseke said. “And we changed the wording at the last minute. I didn’t want to focus so much on this was the worst shooting in modern American history. I wanted to focus more on how we’re so resilient.”

Lessons learned

Staff members couldn’t pinpoint one story as their favorite, but highlighted the collective effort of the 30 to 40 people who make up the staff.

“As long as I’ve been here, I’ve never seen the staff work this hard on a single issue,” Cseke said. “I’m extremely proud of what we put out — I know it was extremely difficult to do it.”

Staff members said they learned important lessons throughout their coverage, including what it means to be compassionate while telling the stories of people and a community experiencing pain. They also learned how to avoid sensationalizing the story. Stories used the shooter’s name sparingly, and pages are free of his photo.

“I feel like I can handle pretty much any situation I get in a job after having to go through this,” Cseke said.

Superceding all of that, however, is how the staff bonded in the aftermath of tragedy.

“I don’t think it’s something we’re ever going to forget, or something that’s going to ever leave us,” Lovell said. “Pretty much everyone is going to remember the first of October.”

Contact Natalie Bruzda at nbruzda@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3897. Follow @NatalieBruzda on Twitter.