On last Thursday's Capital Gazette shooting
One of the advantages and disadvantages of not having a smartphone is that I have no way to check the Internet when I’m on the go. Not unless there’s a wi-fi hotspot. So, when I came home on Thursday night from an assignment out in Austin and saw an e-mail alert from Tronc about a “statement regarding the Annapolis shooting” my first thought was “oh, there must have been a shooting near the office of that newspaper Tribune bought a few years ago. What was it called? The Capitol?”
The idea that the shooting might have happened in the newspaper office itself didn’t even occur to me.
But then, I went to check the BBC News’ world news feed and… Welp.
For those of you who haven’t heard about this, that Thursday afternoon, Jarrod Ramos went into the office of Capital Gazette newspapers (of Annapolis, the state capital of Maryland) and started shooting everybody. Ramos sued the papers after they reported on him being charged with harassment back in 2011. He lost the lawsuit, and he’s been making threats on and off against the papers and their staff ever since.
Six people were killed and two were wounded.
I haven’t really had a chance to write about the shooting, because my past three days has been basically me writing articles, covering events and taking photos back to back, except a late hours in the evening, when I was too tired to write anything coherent. But, given that I’m a journalist and all, I felt that it was important to write something before it vanishes from the headlines completely.
*sigh*
I come from a country where killing of journalists, and not just in war zones, was a thing that has been known to happen even before Putin came to power. Only difference now is that harassment, beatings, smear campaigns and, in some extreme cases, murder, have not-so-implicit government sanction.
And it’s hard not to be conscious of the fact that the Trump Administration has been using anti-media rhetoric straight out of United Russia’s post-Maidan playbook. In the hours after the shooting, there was some speculation floating around, and not just in journalism circles, that Trump’s rhetoric emboldened Ramos to shoot up the newsroom. But everything I’ve read suggests that there wasn’t anything more then a personal grudge that, like I said, started back in 2011.
Could Trump’s rhetoric have emboldened him to turn angry threats into action? We don’t know. And unless we get something that actually confirms it, I’m going to assume that wasn’t what happened.
I’ve never worked in a newsroom. Even when I was on staff at the Bugle, I was allowed to work remotely because, as I’ve written before, that particular part of Plainfield is virtually impossible to reach, public transit wise. But I’ve visited and sometimes even worked from the old Sun-Times Media newsroom, the Pioneer Press newsrooms at the Tribune Tower and the Freedom Center printing plant and the Wednesday Journal Inc newsroom. I got to look at the Journal & Topics newspapers newsroom. I have a certain appreciation for its beehive-like atmosphere as reporters rush to get things done and occasionally ask each other for help. It’s the last place where you’d expect to see a shooter.
After the shooting, New York and Chicago police departments ramped up security at the cities’ papers, just in case. Not that I think there was any real danger, but when a sanctuary that is the newsroom was violated, I like to think that the journalists and other staffers who worked there took some comfort in that.
When I stopped by Wednesday Journal newsroom to pick up some papers earlier today, the receptionist admitted that she was on edge.
Soon after the shooting, a tweet by Capital Gazette reporter Chase Cook went viral.
I can tell you this: We are putting out a damn paper tomorrow.
- Chase Cook (@chaseacook) June 28, 2018
And for a good reason. Because you got to appreciate the fact that, even in the face of the tragedy, they still tried. It’s the same sort of ethos that drove New Orleans Times-Picayune reporters to try to cover Hurricane Katrina, or for Houston Chronicle reporters to try to cover Hurricane Harvey. Or that time my editor at Austin Weekly News wrote about winding up in the midst of a drive-by shooting mere hours after it happened.
But what struck me more were some of the responses to this tweet.
I’m available all night tonight to make calls, send emails, I’ll help on any story you need
- katie rosman (@katierosman) June 28, 2018
Same offer from me. Email on website in bio.
- Jonathan M. Katz 🐱 (@KatzOnEarth) June 28, 2018
Same from me. Email's in the bio.
- (((Shiebelieber))) (@jshieber) June 29, 2018
The Buffalo Newspaper Guild stands ready to assist. Let us know how we can help.
- Buffalo Newspaper Guild (@BuffaloGuild) June 29, 2018
Because, here’s a thing. A lot of what we do involves calling people, e-mailing people, and then calling and e-mailing them again, because the sources you are contacting don’t care about what’s happening on your end, and they have their own schedules. I can’t imagine doing all that while also answering police questions and, oh year, mourning friends and colleagues. So, I don’t know if anything came out of that, but it was really nice that so many people offered.
I suppose the only other thing I can do is post the front page of the paper they did put it
And copy-paste this bit from Vox’s coverage.
The Capital Gazette published tributes to Gerald Fischman, Rob Hiaasen, John McNamara, Rebecca Smith, and Wendi Winters, the five slain staffers, with reporters at the Baltimore Sun helping to honor the victims.
They wrote about Hiaasen’s generosity and mentorship, Fischman’s “clever and quirky voice,” McNamara’s finding his “dream job,” Winters’s “prolific” career and Smith’s kindness and consideration for the world.
The publication also left its editorial page mostly blank, aside from a small bit of text beginning “Today, we are speechless.”
And… here is the worst part. I don’t think this would really after Trump Administration’s media-bashing, or anti-media rhetoric among his supporters.
But who knows - maybe I will be proven wrong.