Prompted by four days passing without mention of Andrew Bartlett’s death on the New Brunswick Beacon and no interest shown in pursuing it during the regular story meeting, Don Dickson and Jan Wong presented the fourth year seminar class with a reality check last Wednesday: while one opportunity to tell the community’s most important story of the week was gone, ignoring it for another week would be remiss on our part.
After all, Jan pointed out, stories about knitting clubs are designed for light news week because they’re not time sensitive. So perched at the front of the room with the class sitting scattered in front of her, Jan led the group through a second story meeting focused solely on ideas tied to the Andrew Bartlett case.
Without question, this meeting put the fourth year class in the most revealing, demanding and emotional situation we’ve ever been in. With a huge story lying at our feet, many of us were forced for the first time to confront the reality of the situation our position as journalists put us in and ask a difficult question: how do we as community members, friends, and people who are still grieving, pull ourselves together enough to tell the stories that need to be told?
Although the Gleaner was first to report the incident, theAQ had been chasing the story all day Sunday and when we put our brief online Monday, it was the first to reveal the name. On Sunday, our sports editor gave us a heads up that he had to go visit a friend in the hospital so he would be late for layout. He didn’t know what was wrong, he said, but CBC wasn’t too far away from the hospital and once he knew what was going on, he would try to make it over to get his section together.
No one was ready when he called a few hours later and told us Andrew Bartlett died.
The next few hours were spent searching for details—phoning the police and the hospital looking for information, scouring Facebook for anyone who might be able to tell us what happened and even driving by his apartment looking for evidence of a crime scene. The university was contacted, alerted to the fact that a STU student had passed away and although Jeffrey Carlton checked in with us every few hours, he remained adamant that until the police released a name, the university couldn’t make a statement.
But waiting around wasn’t an option. So when Derek arrived at the CBC, we put together a plan to tell the story with the information and resources we had available to us. Our goal was simple: we wanted to avoid speculation and we wanted to honour Andrew.
They didn’t nit-pick this approach, but both Don and Jan did stress the need at this point for reporting on the hard news elements of the story—what actually happened that night? Was hazing a factor? Why hasn’t anyone put together a timeline of events yet?
TheAQ knows these stories are important, but there’s no denying that they present us with challenges. As journalists, we’re less experienced in reporting on tragedy when people are still in mourning and as members of a small, close knit community, we want to support our grieving friends without feeling like vultures.
Still, uncovering the details matters for two important reasons: it will stop the rumours and it will bring peace to those who are left to wonder what happened that night. It’s with this in mind that we’re moving forward in our investigation into Andrew’s death.
It’s with the knowledge that our community has been hurt deeply that we’re more determined than ever to find accurate information and get the story right. It’s not about sensationalizing the situation or tarnishing someone’s reputation and it’s certainly not about protecting the university’s if there’s an issue that needs to be addressed to prevent something like this from happening again.
It’s about doing right by Andrew and putting proper value on his life—because he is loved so deeply by so many and he left us far too soon.
