Article Summary: How The Daily Tar Heel designed the front page everyone is talking about by Amaris Castillo

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The Daily Tar Heel, a student newspaper, had planned for its latest edition to cover the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s upcoming football season. Then, one day in late August 2023, an active shooter threatened the campus – and fatally shot his faculty advisor. Inspired by text messages exchanged during the lockdown, the newspaper’s staff pivoted to a new narrative. The resulting text-message-only front page not only conveyed the fear and helplessness UNC’s students and their families faced in those harrowing hours, but it also captured the angst of an era where school shootings have become an all-too-regular occurrence nationwide.

Take-Aways

• An active shooter forced the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill into lockdown on August 28, 2023.
• The newspaper found inspiration for its graphic front page in text messages and social media posts sent during the attack.
• Editors and reporters turned students’ text messages into a harrowing visual narrative that conveys their – and their families’ – fear and helplessness.
• The cover’s evocation of dread and fear connected emotionally with readers.

Summary

An active shooter forced the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill into lockdown on August 28, 2023.

The editors of The Daily Tar Heel – a nonprofit newspaper affiliated with (but not financially backed by) the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill – were ready to go to press with coverage of the University’s upcoming football season the morning of August 28, 2023. By evening, their plan had gone by the wayside. That afternoon, an active shooter [later identified as grad student Tailei Qi] had forced UNC into lockdown. The perpetrator was captured, but not before he killed a faculty member [associate professor Zijie Yan].

The newspaper found inspiration for its graphic front page in text messages and social media posts sent during the attack.

When the paper’s editors met that night, they knew their latest edition needed to address what had occurred, but they weren’t entirely sure how. As editor in chief Emmy Martin scrolled through the texts she received during the ordeal and read students’ posts on social media, an idea for a compelling front page came to her: Why not print the messages themselves – not just hers, but also those other UNC students and their loved ones sent and received while gunshots reverberated and the shooter remained at large?

“The reaction was so universal. Everyone’s parents felt helpless. All the students felt scared.” (Caitlyn Yaede, Daily Tar Heel Print Managing Editor)

Daily Tar Heel staff members reached out to their friends, asking them to share messages. Reading through the missives, print managing editor Caitlyn Yaede was struck by the universality of the emotions in the messages. Whether the writers used expletives or loving language, they expressed a pervasive sense of fear and helplessness.

Editors and reporters turned students’ text messages into a harrowing visual narrative that conveys their – and their families’ – fear and helplessness.

The design team strung the messages together in all-caps, stream-of-consciousness format. They chose Myriad Pro Semibold Condensed font and used red text to highlight particularly potent messages. The print is largest at the top and gradually shrinks as you read down the page.

The first messages are just questions: “ARE YOU SAFE? WHERE ARE YOU? ARE YOU ALONE?”

Later messages include pleas for information and prayers, people saying, “I love you” and “Stay safe,” and statements about what students were hearing and seeing – screams, bangs, and their fellow classmates shaking and weeping in fear.

The cover’s evocation of dread and fear connected emotionally with readers.

Courtney Mitchell, the paper’s general manager and news adviser, confessed that, until she saw the front page, she didn’t fully grasp what students and the university community had experienced. Once she read it, however, she “felt their fear.” Others around the country, she believes, shared her experience as the cover went viral.

“I definitely think this is the most powerful news interpretation of this event that I could imagine. I don’t think I felt their fear until I saw the paper. I think that was the first time I let down my guard enough to be like, ‘Wow, we all just went through this, didn’t we?’…across the country…people are resonating with that. These text messages have actually anthropomorphized fear, and now it’s walking around us. And we can’t ignore it.” (Daily Tar Heel general manager Courtney Mitchell)

Yaede’s social media post about the cover was shared more than 17,000 times in less than 24 hours. As Mitchell said, “I don’t think anyone else except this generation could give voice and legs to this feeling of what it’s like to be on lockdown, while you know that there have been shots fired, or that’s what you’ve been told and that’s what you’re imagining, and you don’t actually know how bad it is.”

In the estimation of the Tar Heel’s editors, the overwhelming public response to the cover is an acknowledgment of what it’s like to face the tragic, too-frequent reality of shots being fired in a place you once thought was safe.

About the Author

Amaris Castillo is a writing and research assistant for the NPR Public Editor and a contributor to Poynter.org.