Newspaper near Fort Hood selling more papers, deferring to Army on whether to use 'terror' label

Single-copy sales of the Killeen Daily Herald skyrocketed following the tragic shooting in Fort Hood, Tex., last week. The Herald, circulation around 20,000, also saw its Web site crash twice on the day of the shootings at the military base. "It is probably the highest in sales that we have ever had," Vice President and General Manager Terry Gandy told Joe Strupp of Editor & Publisher. "Everything has increased. We have put out additional copies and they have sold out." (Read more)

The newspaper doubled its single copy production on Friday, the day after the shooting, and increased by 75 percent on Saturday. The Sunday single copy production was increased from 8,000 to 16,000 for a special section dedicated to the shooting (right). Single copies sold out each of the three days. The paper also publishes the weekly Fort Hood Herald, which is independent from the military-sponsored newspaper, The Fort Hood Sentinel. You can read the ongoing coverage of the shooting from the newspaper, the Sunday special section and the Fort Hood Herald Wednesday special edition.

UPDATE, Nov. 13: Amid debate over whether to call the shootings "terrorism," the Herald is "deferring to the Army officials here," Deputy Managing Editor Dave Miller told Alexandra Fenwick of Columbia Journalism Review. "They’re still doing an internal investigation, the FBI too, and of course [Sen.] Joe Lieberman is saying Congress needs to investigate because he says this looks like terrorism. But if the Army is not going to label it as such, we’re not going to go with it. We have very close ties with the Army here and we don’t want to jeopardize that by throwing around terms that they haven’t used. I’m not saying we’re going to say whatever they say and just parrot it back. In the editorial pages, that’s something different. If we decide to talk about how this might be viewed on a larger scale, that might be an opinon piece." (Read more)