Covering the Violence

By Walter Isaacson, Managing Editor

Back when I was in school, the surreal fear hovering above our heads was about the atom bomb. Our duck-and-cover drills were designed to protect us, somehow, from the Big One. Nowadays, we drill our kids on what to do if a classmate goes nuclear. It's an unlikely scenario, just as the Bomb was. But when you eavesdrop on kids these days, there's the painful possibility you'll hear them speculating on who in their class might be most likely to play Doom for real. The shootings at Columbine, Conyers and elsewhere remind us that the threats we face amid our end-of-the-century prosperity may often be close to home. Very close.

We have a tendency in the U.S. to wrestle with a complex topic like school violence by setting it up as a political debate, such as Is it the proliferation of guns or the increase in violence in the media that's more to blame? Most parents realize it's both--there's no reason that kids should have easy access to arsenals of weapons or that their movies and games should revolve around gruesome fantasy killings--and a lot more as well.

We've tried to cover both these issues fully, and we've also explored such topics as the Internet, attention-deficit disorder, cliques and gangs, homework, hunting, and ways to create better schools and students. After the Conyers incident last week, we decided to do another special report, this one focusing on how to spot and treat troubled kids.

The media have been questioned about giving too much attention to these school shootings. But as the worried father of a third-grader, I think the bigger danger is that we will start paying too little attention to them. The more information we have about these cases, and the more we discuss the issues, the better. We've also been criticized for glorifying the perpetrators by putting their pictures on the air and in our pages. But I feel it's important to see how "normal" these kids can look and to worry a bit more whether they could be the kids next door, or even our own.

Our cover this week was done by photographer and illustrator Matt Mahurin. Look at it carefully: it's a young model he photographed twice, looking sweet and then sinister, and merged into one image with a little gun in his left eye.

The opening essay was written by Nancy Gibbs, whose cover story on Columbine a month ago was so moving it almost made me cry. The Conyers shooting was covered by Atlanta bureau chief Sylvester Monroe, Miami bureau chief Tim Padgett and reporters Tim Roche and David Nordan. The story was written by John Cloud, who did an amazing piece last July about what the various school shooters up to that point had in common. Our story on spotting troubled kids was written by assistant managing editor Howard Chua-Eoan, who usually edits our big news stories but occasionally feels compelled to write them himself. He relied on reporting by senior reporter Alice Park, who last week was at the American Psychiatric Association conference in Washington, and writer-reporter Jodie Morse, who had the delicate task of persuading clinically depressed kids and their parents to talk on the record.

Covering school shootings is difficult. It requires a sensitivity to the delicate world of adolescence, of moods and emotions. So, likewise, does raising a kid--or making policy that affects kids--in this unnerving period. Which is why we think that covering these stories and all the surrounding issues remains so important.

Walter Isaacson, Managing Editor