HOW WE REPORT TODAY
We felt the building shaking a bit on Tuesday afternoon as we were putting the paper together — not much, but enough, and for a long enough period, that we knew something was amiss. A look outside showed no wind or thunder, and we all stood out there wondering, Have we just been through an earthquake in central North Carolina? We had. The 5.9-magnitude quake hit outside Richmond, Va. at 1:51 p.m.; CNN.com had the story up by 2 p.m., but even before that the news had broke on Facebook as thousands of East Coast social media users reported on their first-ever earthquake experiences, many of them loaded with exclamation points. My favorite came from my niece, who was also the first in my feed to post: “WTF???!!!!!” she wrote, in all caps. “JUST HAD AN EARTHQUAKE AT MY FREAKIN HOUSE!!!!!”
