Generally, the news-gathering process goes like this: News breaks, reporters chase after it. Simple enough.
Sunday night, it worked in reverse. News landed on the doorstep of the Daily Tar Heel, UNC Chapel Hill's student newspaper. It came in the form of a bomb threat, now proven to be a hoax, that led campus police to evacuate several campus buildings. One was the student union. That's where the Daily Tar Heel is located. In an instant, the paper's staff had to relocate, in flip-flops and toting laptops, to the sidewalk. That's where editors, reporters and photographers spent several hours keeping their community up to date.
Here's what Allison Nichols, the DTH's editor in chief, told me today about the experience.
So it's late Sunday night and you're hard at work. And then what?
At about 9:20 I got a call from the opinion editor who had gone home from the night. He was in the front of the SU and our office is in the back and he said they were evacuating.
There were police. They had not made it back to our office yet but they were intending to. So I found out there was a bomb threat so I went back and got the staff out.
Were you afraid?
Click "Read More" below for the rest of the interview.
