Bob CollinsThere have been a couple of suicides at Hastings High School in the last week or so, a subject that requires an honest and somewhat clinical look at the cause.
Many experts have discouraged educators from speaking about suicides at school, for fear they’ll be sensationalized — if not romanticized. That fear is not without foundation. Take KSTP TV, which went for the former in its story, “Police Investigate Rumors of Suicide Pact at Hastings High School.”
It was several paragraphs into the story before we find, “the investigation found the suicide pact was not true,” which leaves you with only the fact that two kids somehow reached the point at which the solution to their individual problem was taking their own life. Not much of a story there, apparently.
More sensible, is the Hastings Star Gazette, which has reported both suicides without the hype, and only the facts, few as they may be.
And today the paper showed even more good sense when it posted the video it recorded at last night’s hour-long meeting at Hastings High School on “Talking to your kids about depression, suicide and grief.”
The paper is doing what journalism should: some good.
