UNC Student Paper Goes Viral For Stunning Cover After Campus Shooting

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but the student journalists at the The Daily Tar Heel, the paper for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, took a different tack to visually portray the panic incited by an on-campus shooting earlier this week.

On Monday, authorities say graduate student Tailei Qi, 34, entered the school’s Caudill Laboratories and fatally shot associate professor Zijie Yan, who worked in the school’s department of applied physical sciences.

Qi was taken into custody and was held on charges of first-degree murder and carrying a gun on educational property, police records show.

Caitlyn Yaede, the managing editor of the paper’s print edition, offered a preview on X of Wednesday’s front page, which covered the shooting.

Instead of photos showing the shooter, police or UNC students reacting to the incident, the front page was dedicated to text messages sent by students after an alert warning them of an active shooting was sent out Monday afternoon.

“Are you safe?” one message reads, while another reads, “Where are you?” Another student texted, “I’m so fucking scared.”

You can see Yaede’s tweet below.

The front page has gone viral and received praise from other journalists. As noted by The News & Observer, The Daily Tar Heel’s staff covered the shooting while under lockdown themselves.