Gaming Columbine
March 23, 2009 at 2:41 PM | Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a commentTags: columbine, Germany, kotaku, Super Columbine Massacre RPG!, Tattered Cover, Winnenden
Kotaku.com is known as the Web site for everything gaming. And that includes the intersection between gaming and the Columbine shootings.
On Thursday, my second set of excerpts went up on Kotaku. (The first were in February.) Each time, the discussion has been wide-ranging, and vigorous.
In February the excerpts, with an excellent intro by Kotaku Managing Editor Brian Crecente (and a former Rocky colleague) garnered 14,406 page views and 115 comments, by one count. The excerpts were also featured on the media Web site gawker.com.
On Thursday, I was moved by reaction to the Winnenden, Germany shootings to write an op-ed piece about the continuous, and wrong-headed nod to video games as the heart of the problem. There were 13,873 page views and 122 comments at one point.
Gamers may have a knuckle-dragging reputation. But I have read a sampling of the Kotaku reactions to my book, and I found them to be mostly high-minded. And more high-minded, I might add, than many of the comments posted on newspaper Web sites.
Kotaku is not necessarily the outlier. Another good forum for Columbine via the gamers can be found on Super Columbine Massacre RPG! (Although I have a hard time endorsing that name.)
If you want to go beyond the discussions and excerpts, I understand my book, Columbine: A True Crime Story, a victim, the killers, and the nation’s search for answers is now on the shelves at Tattered Cover.
Winnenden, Germany School Shooting: The Media
March 13, 2009 at 6:52 AM | Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a commentTags: columbine, depression, Germany, gun control, school shooting, video games, Winnenden
As I was watching a BBC television story on the Winnenden, Germany school shooting Wednesday night, I was sickened not just by the content, but the media coverage.
The coverage itself was bothersome because there was no context – i.e. no explanation – added to the timeline of events, and it made me think that coverage of school shootings tends to follow a predictable sequence.
First, reporters try to establish a “tick tock” of events. This is of course crucial, and no easy task. It has taken years to unravel the details of the Columbine shootings – in part because the Jefferson County Sheriff withheld information – but consider the difficulty of nailing hundreds of details within the first hours.
Next are the interviews with people who knew – or think they knew – the shooter. “I just can’t figure out why he did it,” they say. There is a collective surrender, as if there is nothing that can be done. There is nothing to do but repeat the history of school shootings and indicate this is part of a puzzling trend. Until the next one occurs.
I did come across one article the day of the shootings that was discussing gun control. And that angle continues to be covered. The New York Times today seemed to push violent video games angle, but without a full exploration. The BBC mentioned depression in the shooter, but again failed to fully explore the issue.
I am not knocking daily journalism – you certainly can’t cover everything in a day. And the New York Times did post its excellent series on rampage killers the day of the shootings.
But I would argue the gun control and video games explanations are too simplistic. And there are experts out there – albeit a few – who have studied some of the common denominators among school shooters. (That’s the topic I wrote on the day of the shootings.) Expertise and context can connect the dots, rather than simply add to the gruesome timeline.
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