“A New Kind of Madness: 50th Anniversary of UT Tower Shooting”

Austin American-Statesman  
July 31, 2016 

Fifty years later, the 1966 sniper attack from the top of the University of Texas Tower still grips Austin.

The American-Statesman was there when it happened. Now for the 50th anniversary of the tragedy, a new generation of American-Statesman reporters sought to assess the legacy of that terrible piece of local history. Rather than retelling the oft-told stories of the day of the shooting, the Statesman report, “A New Kind of Madness,” brought the shooting’s lasting effects into the here and now, exploring issues of gun laws on campus and the spread of mass shootings.

To do so, the Statesman team used all of the tools available to modern journalism, including an interactive presentation, video and 3-D photography that let viewers go inside the Tower and explore the scene of the crime.

The package was published online in the form presented here, as well as in a series of individual stories that ran in the weeks leading up to the anniversary and in a special print section on the eve of the anniversary.

LINK to content online

Submitted by John Bridges.