Josh Meltzer | The Roanoke Times

Lynn Logan, a Virginia Tech graduate, tries to get a quiet moment of reflection and prayer while surrounded by news photographers on Tuesday morning, the day after the deadly shooting on campus.

Photographers swarm around a group of students praying on the grass at Lane Stadium following Tuesday’s convocation. An overflow crowd gathered in the stadium after Cassell Coliseum, the site of the event, was at capacity.

BLACKSBURG -- The bereaved and the curious were surrounded Tuesday by a seeming garden of satellite dishes arching like sunflowers toward the sky to beam news about the worst mass shooting in U.S. history from Virginia Tech to the world.

Not "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" nor even Hokie football have brought the crush of press and television attention to Virginia's largest town and university as did the shooting deaths of 33 people by Cho Seung-Hui. Police say Seung-Hui, a 23-year-old English major from Centreville, opened fire on students in two Tech buildings in less than three hours Monday morning, then shot himself in Norris Hall.

Crews from the Washington, D.C., bureaus of CNN, The New York Times, Fox News as well as reporters from Norway, Japan, France, Germany and Spain have streamed into Southwest Virginia, asking for directions, information and interviews.

Tech public relations officers quickly distributed the first 250 press credentials they had on hand Monday and had to make more for Tuesday, Tech spokesman Mark Owczarski said. Owczarski estimated the media presence at several hundred.

Used well, the national spotlight "can reveal strength and courage and dignity in ways that counterbalance the terror and the horror" of a tragedy like Tech's, said Bob Steele, an ethics specialist with the Poynter Institute, a journalism think tank and training center in Florida. It can help victims and families find comfort.

Fox News general assignment reporter Molly Henneberg was one of the first national correspondents on the scene in Blacksburg. In her experience covering the Hurricane Katrina disaster and war in Iraq and Afghanistan, Henneberg said the press corps "can help people across the country feel this and grieve."

It can also be cathartic for traumatized families to talk about their loved ones and see them memorialized on national TV and in the national press, she said.

But it can also overwhelm the community, Steele said. Especially vulnerable are local reporters who must compete with the nimble, well-connected, well-staffed national media. And victims, families and officials can find themselves besieged by constant phone calls, e-mails and door knocks.

Done poorly, extensive coverage of a tragedy can distort reality and misrepresent a community, Steele said. But he's seen no glaring mistakes made so far in the coverage of Tech's tragedy.

Ranae Gillie, co-owner of Gillie's restaurant on College Avenue, called the media attention "incredible." But Nancy Riley, who drove in from Northern Virginia Monday night to make a pot of spaghetti and give hugs to her daughter Katie, a Tech senior, said the attention was understandable and inevitable.

"It's all people everywhere are talking about," Riley said.

Roanoke Regional Airport has been slammed with the national press corps and President Bush's visit. For a time Monday evening, families of victims and students arriving there could find no available rental cars to get to Blacksburg, said Sherry Wallace, airport spokeswoman. Most Blacksburg hotels were booked Tuesday and reporters and families were spreading into hotels throughout the New River Valley.

CBS Evening News anchorwoman Katie Couric offered orange M&Ms to local reporters attempting to interview her Monday evening at the Holtzman Alumni Center on West Campus Drive. Couric, like NBC's Brian Williams and her former colleagues from the "Today Show," have been broadcasting from Tech. But she declined to be interviewed about the affect of national press attention on the town of 40,000, saying "I don't want to be the focal point of the story. I want it to the be the community."

Meanwhile, extra rental cars were being brought in to the Roanoke airport on Tuesday. Limousines services there are offering free rides to Blacksburg and the SmartWay buses are making extra trips. No matter what it takes, "we will get people down there," Wallace said.

Blacksburg could be in for a long association with national media, some reporters said Tuesday. Outlets kept crews on the scene of the 1999 Columbine school shootings for as long as three weeks.