By Kevin Stankiewicz
The first day of the fall semester in 2016 was idyllic, sunny and around 80 degrees. It was the perfect day to begin my new portrait series for The Lantern called “Humans of Ohio State,” an homage to the “Humans of New York” project that was all the rage at that time. Walk around campus, find people to photograph, talk to them about their lives, print the results — it would be a pleasant supplement to my longer-term work as the investigative John R. Oller Special Projects Reporter that semester.
Three months later, on Nov. 28, 2016, it would prove to be much more, when a terrorist attack on campus injured 11 people and thrust the university — and The Lantern, in particular — into the global spotlight.
It was an overcast morning, not even 48 hours removed from Ohio State’s epic victory over Michigan at The Shoe. When I heard the emergency vehicle sirens on my walk to class, I immediately chased after them — and the story. Unsurprisingly, many of my Lantern colleagues did the same. From the moment the campus safety alert was posted on social media and blasted to our phones — “Buckeye Alert: Active Shooter on campus. Run Hide Fight. Watts Hall. 19th and College.” — we followed our instincts. We did our jobs.
Our live-updates story on the attack had 11 bylines, and that is assuredly just a fraction of the people who were involved with coverage for The Lantern and Lantern TV that day and beyond. It didn’t matter what you typically covered or where on the masthead your name appeared. Our sports editors — Jacob Myers, Colin Hass-Hill, Nicholas McWilliams and Ashley Nelson — were in the middle of recording a video analyzing the Michigan game when they got the Buckeye Alert. They left the studio, grabbed cameras, some notepads and pens, and were on the scene just as officials were covering the slain attacker’s body. Reporters and freelancers sprang into action, too.
Editor-in-chief Sallee Ann Harrison (née Ruibal) skillfully quarterbacked it all. As our phones were flooded with texts from family and friends asking if we were OK, Lantern reporters fanned out across campus, preoccupied with something else: reporting the news.It was a masterclass in rising to the occasion and owning a story that shook our backyard. When national attention eventually subsided, The Lantern owned the story.
A few hours after the attack, around 1:30 p.m., Professor Nicole Kraft called me to say that the perpetrator’s identity had surfaced in the national press. His name was Abdul Razak Ali Artan. I knew exactly who he was. He was the subject of the first “Humans of Ohio State” feature I’d written. My portrait of him — alongside an extended quote of him discussing his fears of being Muslim on campus — had run on Page 5 of the August 25 paper. The news organizations that picked up his name from law enforcement sources found the feature online.
It was an unsettling development. Not only did news organizations including the Associated Press want access to my photograph, but the contents of my conversation with Artan were particularly relevant because terrorism was suspected in the attack (ISIS later claimed credit, though the FBI said Artan was influenced by the group’s propaganda rather than personally directed to carry out the attack). I started getting phone calls and social media messages from other journalists asking to talk about him. Producers from “Good Morning America” called my parents.
The newsroom camaraderie that defines my three years as a Lantern staffer was on full display during the overwhelming few days that followed for me personally. While I was proud to have taken the picture and published his thoughts, I was also second-guessing myself — what had changed in Artan from the soft-spoken, frightened new student I had interviewed? Were there signs I should have seen?
When I reflected on the interview in public comments, some people on social media ripped me for “humanizing a terrorist” and called me naive. It was a cocktail of conflicting emotions, but everyone at The Lantern had my back. To this day, some of my closest friendships were forged inside the walls of the Lantern newsroom. Not a day goes by when I don’t exchange text messages with at least one of them.
While my time at The Lantern taught me plenty of journalistic lessons — such as the importance of going the extra mile in reporting, turning in clean copy and subject-matter versatility, and how it’s never too late to start a pot of black coffee — the relationships last longer than any pride from a front-page byline. I have no doubt the same will be true for generations to come.
Editor’s Note: Kevin Stankiewicz was editor-in-chief of The Lantern for the 2017-18 academic year and a reporter for The Columbus Dispatch from 2018-19. He is currently editor of the CNBC Investing Club, part of CNBC.com, and lives in New York City.
