Throughout the Mid-Willamette Valley this weekend, wherever there are youngsters in uniforms, we will temporarily yield to laughter, applause and chatter.

Public-address announcers will ask for a moment of silence to remember the tragedy at Virginia Tech that ended 32 precious lives and that of a killer.

It's no disrespect to the Virginia Tech community or anyone who has lost loved ones. The reality is that headlines -- and our nation's psyche -- change quickly in our instant culture.

The nation's newspapers told the story in different ways yet conveyed the emotional devastation that any normal person should have felt that day.

Oregon newspapers, for the most part, focus on local and state news. But the front pages of April 17 reflected how the shootings touched our communities.

Our coverage featured a first-person scene-setter from reporter Dennis Thompson Jr., who attended Virginia Tech, and two pages of inside coverage. Justin Much's story on Page 3A included reactions from local campuses and Virginia Tech alums.

Stories related to Virginia Tech were popular on Statesman Journal.com, but the most viewed story (and video) was about Gould's sentencing to 20 years in prison for 14 counts of first-degree sex abuse.

Readers went online to post comments on the shootings and submitted letters to the Opinion page, but we received little feedback on our coverage.

A regular fan wrote to chastise our coverage. "I, for one, would appreciate the hard news in my daily SJ rather than finding it in the weekly news magazines," she said.

Yet, by Friday, just four days after the devastation, the nation's conversation began shifting away from Blacksburg. "At Va. Tech, a touch of normality" headlined a sports story in USA Today.

The story was about how the Virginia Tech campus will be busy this weekend. The softball, baseball and women's lacrosse teams all are on their home fields today.

Of course, they won't be alone. Add photographers and reporters to the typical crowd of students, parents and Blacksburg locals. A reminder that the story changes but doesn't go away.

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