Local newspapers gave the other side of story

Reporters told different stories of Sago tragedy, depending on location and needs of the community.
SPECIAL TO THE VINDICATOR
BUCKHANON, W.Va. -- The office of the Record Delta newspaper here would go unnoticed by most outsiders.
The newsroom hides under a pink awning next to a gas pump and an ice cream parlor, and a few reporters may be seen working between cubicles and plastic plants. Come up to the right glass door, and a bright yellow window sticker stands out, in memoriam to the miners in the nearby community of Sago.
While the national media was busy focusing its coverage on the causes of the fatal mine collapse in Sago, the local newspapers were busy focusing their stories on the community and the families of those involved.
Headlines during the week of Jan. 2, 2006, read "Community gathers for candlelight vigil" and "Surviving miner's hometown prays for his recovery." Photography focused on the people constructing memorials to their loved ones, but not the tears shed in the process.
"It was all over the police and fire scanners that morning," recalled Becky Wagoner of the Elkins Inter-Mountain newspaper in Elkins, W. Va.
"There was something wrong with the mines. [We were close to deadline,] so I snagged some pictures, grabbed some info, and turned that in before returning for the more concrete news," she said.
More coverage
Wagoner was the first reporter covering the Sago mining disaster early that Monday morning in January 2006, but when she returned for more in-depth explanations, crews from local and state level media were swarming for information. Larger and national outlets, such as CNN and the Associated Press, didn't arrive on the scene until late in the evening.
Brian Bergstrom, editor of the Record Delta, remembers the difficulties of those first hours. With a staff of seven reporters and editors, many of whom were busy watching WVU play against Georgia in the Sugar Bowl, Bergstrom's first job was to get the team back together. The second job was to get the facts.
"Initially, the problem was that no one knew what was happening in there. The press conferences weren't set up yet, so we focused on learning what happened so we'd have something for the Wednesday edition," Bergstrom said. "We were working closely with the national media at that time, since we were both trying to get the same basic stories out there. After that, we started to branch off."
Incorrect information
Bergstrom recalled the night before going to press for Wednesday, Jan. 4, 2006, when the media first announced that 12 miners were still alive.
"We rewrote our front page story and went to press around 1 o'clock. [Two hours later,] we got a call from our field reporter, and he said, 'The governor's not smiling right now; I think something might be wrong. Stop the presses until we know what's going on,'" Bergstrom said.
The Record Delta publishes on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so an error on the front page would last longer than in the daily (and sometimes hourly) publications of the national media. Scrambling to reach a last-minute deadline, the staff attached an editor's note to the story, explaining the events before the story "Emotional rollercoaster ends in tragedy."
The editor's note read: "Due to a devastating series of miscommunications Tuesday night and early Wednesday morning, The Record Delta had to be reprinted to correct grievous errors being reported at the mine site at press time. Once the facts were finally revealed, just a single man, Randal McCloy [Jr.], survived Monday's explosion. ...The following story was written just before these events, immediately following the announcement of the first fatality at approximately 11 p.m."
Bergstrom said, "We missed all the delivery deadlines, but we did what we had to do. We couldn't have something like that on the front page, almost forcing the families to look at that, if the story was wrong."
Overwhelming
Both reporters had a difficult time recalling memorable stories, but for different reasons.
Wagoner said, "Every story was memorable in its own way, so it's hard to decide on one being particularly interesting."
"My memory was totally exhausted at the time," Bergstrom said. "This was an intense story to cover, and there were definitely some challenges, but it was a great experience. You don't have stories like this come around too often."
Wagoner said the national media's reporting techniques were "pushy and forceful," yet she doesn't feel the local media outlets were struggling, much less competing, against the national coverage.
"Every organization focused on different areas at the time. Since this was our community, we focused on the miners and the rescue attempts and continued to update the stories as they happened. ... We always try to cover the community as best we can, and that's what [I feel] we did here," Wagoner said.
Bergstrom felt the local coverage had to be different due to the connection to the community.
"The national media -- they got their stories and left. They didn't have to worry about the lingering effects of their stories in the community. We tried to walk the line between being covering the story and being respectful to the families," Bergstrom said.
Bergstrom admitted his view of journalism changed after his experience covering the story of the miners, mainly because of his different start in the journalism industry.
"I was originally hired as a fill-in reporter, working over the summer, 'cause there aren't many jobs in this area for a computer science major. An event like this was totally different from anything we've covered before, bringing our area to a national level," he said.
The national media coverage engrained the events of Jan. 2, 2006 into the minds of America. The local press made sure the lives lost in the mines would never be forgotten.