For months now, the print and broadcast media have been brimming with news of schoolyard shootings.

There have been seven such incidents in all to date, four in the southeast, four others in the far west. And yet, wherever these shootings have occurred, the reaction has been mostly the same.

A teen goes crazy in his classroom or outside on the playground, and the headlines blare: "Teenage Time Bomb" "Southern 'Gun' Culture Begets Violence," and on and on and on.

Such events are tailor-made for tabloid journalism and attempts by the so-called sophisticated press, like The New York Times, to provide all the lurid details while offering a so-called high-minded analysis.

That's why we so hardily applauded the recent decision by the Chicago Sun Times to relegate these stories to something other than the front page.

For all the talk of broken homes and weak gun laws being at the roots of these terrible and horrifying incidents, it seems to us that a large measure of the blame lies right here with us in the press.

Yes, we agree that there are a number of contributing factors in the case of each of these incidents, but our feeling is that in the end it was the pursuit of some kind of twisted fame ¬ infamy written in 64 point headlines ¬ that pushed a number of these kids over the murderous line.

Imagine, if you will, a young person feeling completely alienated and alone in the world ¬ for whatever the root causes. Then he sees a kid much like himself splashed all over the front page of the newspaper and talked about at length by "famous reporters" on television.

As inarticulate about their motives as many of these young trigger men have been, one could easily see each of them saying, "My life's not much... but everybody's going to know my name."

In recent weeks, several major media outlets have turned from covering the carnage to "trying to explain the carnage," but few, if any of the articles has offered anything but a smattering of opinions from so-called experts without really getting at what was in these kids' minds when they gunned down classmates and teachers.

And every time such a story is run, headshots of the gunman are reproduced in startling black and white.

The editors at the Chicago Sun-Times explained their decision to move such stories off the front page as an effort to avoid "scaring young children."

"Here, here," we say. But let's take the effort a step further. While the sociologists and psychologists and their colleagues are trying to determine the real factors behind the shootings, we believe our colleagues in the press should try to blunt the influence of the potential for media-wrought fame on other impressionable youths.

Take away the connection to high-profile calamity and fodder for talk show hosts and you may not prevent every incident of this kind from occurring, but we strongly believe, you'd surely go a long way toward reducing their number.

Daniel J. McCue