How TEEN PEOPLE magazine covered Columbine in 1999

The Columbine massacre of April 20, 1999, was the deadliest mass shooting at a K-12 school in US history, until it was surpassed by the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in December 2012, and, later, the Uvalde school shooting in May 2022. It was the deadliest mass shooting at a high school in US history, until the Parkland high school shooting in February 2018. Ten of the twelve students killed at Columbine were in the school library, where the two perpetrators also ended their own lives. Twenty-one additional people were injured by gunshots, and gunfire was also exchanged with the police. Another three people were injured trying to escape. In their coverage of Columbine, TEEN PEOPLE magazine described earlier examples of mass shootings in the US. (Columbine was the fifth deadly school shooting in the previous two years.) They wrote, “This kind of thing seems to be happening more and more—and in the quiet little places where you’d least expect it: Pearl, Mississippi; Springfield, Oregon; Jonesboro, Arkansas; Paducah, Kentucky; and Conyers, Georgia." TEEN PEOPLE quoted a psychologist who had worked with mass shooting survivors. He said this incident would “put to rest the notion of being immune to this... Maybe that’s a good thing,” he said, “because now we can get down to answers.” In this episode of Teen People, I read excerpts of survivors' stories from the August 1999 issue of TEEN PEOPLE. Podcast notes: Find my interview with TEEN PEOPLE Trendspotter Padraic Maroney, who spoke with me about Columbine's after-effects: https://soundcloud.com/teenpeoplepod/padraic Credits: "A school under siege" by Tod Olson and John DiConsiglio, TEEN PEOPLE, August 1999. Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbine_High_School_massacre. President Clinton's Remarks Regarding Columbine HS Shooting (1999) courtesy; William J. Clinton Presidential Library. Teen People is recorded in Kingston/Katarokwi, the traditional territory of the Anishinaabe, Haudenosaunee and the Huron-Wendat.