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Virginia Tech Tragedy: Crisis unfolding on the website homepage

Yesterday I posted a screenshot of the homepage of the university website when I heard the news — only early in the afternoon as I was working on deadlines far away from any news sources.

This morning I was able to retrieve an early version time stamped at 9:58 AM from Google’s cache.

I’ll try to post more screenshots in this post as they become available, thus trying to provide a record that could help study how this terrible tragedy was handled on the website.

April 16 – 9:58 AM (Google cache – the announcement – on the black background – reads “Emergency. Gunman on Campus, Stay Indoors and Away from Windows. See details.”

April 16 – 12:40 PM

April 16 – 4:45 PM (sent by reader Lori Parker)

April 16 – 10:00 PM

April 17 – 9:30 AM (Gunman identified by name)

April 17 – 3:25 PM (timestamped from the news section – the quote is from VT president and reads: “I want to extend my deepest, sincerest, and most profound sympathies to the families of these victims …”


April 19 – 9:40 AM (timestamped from the news section – the right column titled “We Remember” lists the names of the victims whose families have been notified at this time)

April 23 – 7:45 AM (Classes resume at VT)

Here’s the event timeline provided by Virginia Tech.