To the 10/11 News Team,

On Monday, March 26, a fight took place at Lincoln Southeast High School which was later linked to a homicide blocks away. As I expected, this was covered by local news in the days following and has been updated with every new piece of information received from authorities. This is all well and good and, as a student journalist, I am glad to have more information about this event that has shaken my peers and I. But, after seeing how the story has progressed and the coverage it has received, I feel the need to address a problem in your reporting.

Journalists should inform their communities of crime; they should track down leads and demand answers from those in power. They should not, however, publish sensationalized content in hopes of getting more “likes” or “views.” I am disappointed to see that your news organization has fallen prey to the allure of clickbait coverage.

Shortly after the fight at LSE, you published a crude video of the brawl. The video was clearly taken by a student and filmed on a phone. It showed the violent altercation that involved several students, administrators, and campus security officers. It showed our security guard interfering with one of the students in the fight and continued to play it in slow motion. As the Co-Editor-in-Chief of our school newspaper, The Clarion, I am confused about what the footage was supposed to accomplish for the readers/viewers. A student took the video and the content is only of a security guard trying to carry out his responsibility and restrain a student who was assaulting another. From my perspective, this doesn’t add any clarifying information to the story itself, and frankly I feel that it was published in poor taste.

I hope that 10/11 seriously considers the objectives of their coverage and continues to work to make sure the content they publish is relevant to the story at hand. As a journalist, it is my understanding that our role is to report the truth, not the latest Snapchat story of a fight from a student’s phone. This video, unfortunately, has distracted readers from the actual purpose of the article – to investigate the violent death of Edgar Union Jr., father of five kids, as a result of gang violence. The video shown doesn’t add detail or any facts about gang violence in Lincoln, but rather implicates a group of students and a school, unjustly and inaccurately. I worry that 10/11 is feeding into a culture of fear and may inflame an already nervous community given recent national events.