Dag.

Without a lock on the door, the school’s lead teacher pressed her body against the door to hold it shut, Ms. Day said. That teacher was shot through the door in the leg and arm.

As Fred Rogers' mom said, "Look for the helpers."

I heard one report that Adam Lanza has asperger's (or related). I know asperger's is supposed to fall out of favor as a diagnosis, just repeating something I think I read on the AP stream.

Autistic spectrum disorders are no longer separated in the DSM V. Which is pants, for the record.

Oh jeez, it's so sad and traumatic for Ryan Lanza. His brother kills off his whole family and he gets blamed for it.

This is why speculation in front of the facts is not good.

This is why speculation in front of the facts is not good.

I am not a news organization. I am not disseminating the information to the world at large. I am talking about it to a closed circle of friends.

There's a difference.

There's a difference.

The desire of the individual to have information before there is information to be had drives the news organizations. If there wasn't an audience for speculation, they wouldn't be reporting ahead of the facts.

So, no. There's not.

(I do understand the impulse, to be clear. People want to know and understand something not understandable. I still think that at all levels it does more harm than good.)

I'm sorry, but "audience for speculation" is a specious bit of bullshit.

The word for that is "curiosity." That's not what's wrong with the news cycle.

So, no. There's not.

I disagree. There's a huge difference between the responsibility for a news organization to have all the facts confirmed before making a report and people discussing what may or may not have happened.

There is absolutely no negative impact to inquiring, and the implication that it's some kind of morbid impulse in baseless gossip is pretty far from my desire to get a handle on it.

FTR, I totally get what you are saying, Plei. I think without actually sensible, confirmed information, it is all speculative and sort of kneejerky.

Anyone hear from ita?

I'm sorry, but "audience for speculation" is a specious bit of bullshit.

Dude, Paul used to work in news. He worked in news for YEARS. It's really, really not. How do you think TV news *works*? The whole mindset is driven by what can get the eyes on them, what does the audience want. And it's only got worse over the last decade.

This is on both a local and national level.

And in its separate post

There is absolutely no negative impact to inquiring, and the implication that it's some kind of morbid impulse in baseless gossip is pretty far from my desire to get a handle on it.

I said in my follow up that I understand the impulse to try to wrap our heads around it. But wrapping our heads around it is not the same thing as saying, "hey, someone on ABS said it was Joe Schmoe in the basement with the lead pipe, and someone thinks they've found Joe's Facebook page."