I read with interest Eric Townsend’s article in Sunday’s N&R on firefighters’ efforts to save Eastern Guilford High School. I has a couple of issues with the article, but I decided to sit back see if there was any reaction from readers so I can do what I do best —- pile on.
Now we have reaction, from Charlie Abourjilie of Greensboro:
Your May 20 front page contained the worst piece of yellow journalism and sensationalism I have seen in a local paper. The second sentence of paragraph two (in the story about the Eastern High School fire) –“Maybe a bitter teacher is to blame” — is terribly insulting and offensive to the teachers and staff at Eastern, as well as teachers everywhere.
Fair enough, Townsend does cover the full spectrum of possible suspects:
Did one prankster or a group of students ignite the first flame? Maybe a bitter teacher is to blame. Or a school visitor who slipped unseen into Room 221, next to a stairwell off the upstairs hall.
But you have to admit Townsend’s taking a big leap in identifying possible suspects himself, considering the fact that that local authorities still have no idea who set the fire.
But Townsend takes an even bigger leap at the end of the story:
Fire officials witnessed the collapse from their command post — a crowded classroom trailer — on a small television sporting a makeshift wire antenna. They had known for hours the building would suffer heavy damage.
Yet young firefighters and veteran chiefs alike second-guessed their efforts. No one initially believed the school would fall. They had fought the fire by the book.
They would learn in the following months that nothing could have stopped the fire. Too much time had passed between when it started and its discovery. Eastern was doomed before the first alarm had been pulled.
The problem I have with that passage is the lack of supporting quotes from fire officials that Eastern was indeed doomed from the beginning. Otherwise, the reader isn’t sure if that’s what they indeed believe or if Townsend is just making that assumption based on his interviews.
It’s an issue of editing, one that evidently wasn’t addressed before the story went to print.
