The tragedy that devastated Northern Illinois University yesterday made headlines around the world. But unlike other incidents such as those at Virginia Tech and more recently at a Chicago-area shopping mall, the mainstream news outlets — at least for several hours — were relatively powerless in disseminating information and reporting the story.

Why? Because, as one student so aptly put it, Dekalb is “in the middle of a bunch of cornfields.” Indeed, being 2 hours away from a major metropolis limited the news media’s ability to dig for information on the scene, leaving them to call school officials and other personnel for brief phone interviews on the air, at least until a local affiliate could arrive on the scene and patch through.

The situation also put the town’s local and student publications in the spotlight: The only known photos of the immediate aftermath came from three photographers: Eric Sumberg of the Daily Chronicle, the town’s local newspaper; and Stacey Huffstutler and Jim Killam of the Northern Star, NIU’s student newspaper. CNN and the Associated Press are among the many news organizations that have broadcast the photographers’ stirring images.

At the end of the day, as much as the mainstream news outlets covered their bases on the scene, one aspect of their coverage fell short: User-generated content, or UGC.

Despite repeated on-air prompts for students to send in cell phone or digital video footage of “what they saw,” at this time there doesn’t appear to be any on-scene user-generated video airing on the news or online. This time, “citizen journalism” just couldn’t deliver.

Over at CNN, this was the only user-submitted video playing on the network’s “I-Report” section. ABC’s “i-Caught” featured aerial news-helicopter footage of the scene, which are hardly clips sent in by students “on the ground.” MSNBC and FOX’s user-generated content sites had no footage at all.

YouTube is still sparsely filled with videos relating to the incident at NIU, and the most relevant uploads are webcam reactions from students. True, these aren’t really capturing the scene itself, but they were closer to broadcasting the unfiltered voices of grieving students than any footage on any news site.

This post particularly stood out from the rest:

Certainly, a situation like this one puts citizen journalism and user-generated content to the test. But it is exactly a situation like this in which user video would be so valuable, both to viewers and to the media companies that have spent millions of dollars creating user-generated content departments like “I-Report” and “i-Caught.”

I’ve always seen user-generated content as a gamble for media companies. The tragedy at NIU is a prime example of what happens when the media rolls the dice with the public, and loses.

Photo Credit: Eric Sumberg/daily-chronicle.com, via Associated Press