Remember that reference the Washington Post made yesterday to the Virginia Tech shooter playing violent video games including Counterstrike when he was in high school?

Well it's gone.

The reference disappeared from the online version of the story sometime between when it hit yesterday evening and when it went into print today. The online version no longer has the reference either.

When I first was tipped off that it had disappeared I thought it was likely the result of a running story getting edited. Often with a breaking online story, a reporter's notebook is sort of dumped into a story. That goes double for hot, breaking news and triple for online stories.

I suspect what happened was that as time went by the editors and reporters got more relevant details and edited the story accordingly, beefing up the bits that mattered and cutting out the stuff that was not really connected.

Among the bits on the cutting room floor? The Counterstrike reference. I suspect that's because a childhood habit of playing video games while in high school doesn't really play a part in what a person does when they are in college and his roommates never mention him gaming, so more than likely he wasn't much of a gamer anymore.

Nosing around I was able to find out that, that was indeed the case. No conspiracy here, just good editing. Too bad that didn't happen before the reference made it into the first version. Brian Crecente

Washington Post Links Shooter to Counterstrike [Washington Post]