Blogger note:  This blog is solely my thoughts, feelings and reaction to the devastating events of June 28, 2018 at the Capital Gazette.  My hope is that you read it, gain some perspective about the life of a journalist and take action to support freedom of the press.  Feel free to comment and engage in meaningful discussion.     #JournalismMatters

Sixty seconds.

That is all it took for a madman to murder John McNamara, Rebecca Smith, Rob Hiaasen, Wendi Winters and Gerald Fischman.  They were at work, doing their jobs. They worked for the Capital Gazette. Four were journalists, Smith was an advertising assistant.

It took 60 seconds to take their lives. The police response was perfect. They did everything right. Still, five people are dead.

There is only one person to blame. The murderer. His name will not be used here.

The Capital Gazette is like family

I have this routine. Every morning I arrive at work around 7:30 a.m. I turn on my computer, open my email and reply to anything needing immediate attention. I check my calendar for the day, make my generic french vanilla cappuccino in the Keurig, read the Defense News Early Bird and then read the Capital Gazette via my digital subscription.

Every morning I welcome the Capital Gazette into my life.

On Fridays, if I remember, I send an article that ran in the Fort Meade Soundoff to the Capital Gazette, which will run in the following Wednesday paper.  If I forget, I will have an email waiting for me Monday morning from a certain editor.  I now only send the article to four two editors instead of three.  Just today I removed Rob Hiaasen’s name from the list.  The Soundoff reporters are Baltimore Sun employees, which is part of the same company that owns the Capital Gazette.

So to say the least, the Capital Gazette feels like part of the family.

Infuriating anger

I will never forget what I was doing on June 28, 2018, when I heard the news of the shooting. I was actually in the area at the time, hitting up Target before meeting a friend at the Double T Diner. The diner is about a mile from the shooting. I received a text from another friend, whose step-daughter worked in the building at 888 Bestgate Road. When I fully read the text and comprehended what I was reading I cried and I felt an immense anger. My friend and I spent our time at the very empty diner watching the news, listening to the helicopters hovering above and checking Twitter to see if the employees we knew checked in. We waited and waited for one tweet in particular, but it never came. That night at home, breaking news scrolled across the screen. The names of the victims had been released. The one person we hoped to see a tweet from was dead. Her name scrolled across the screen. My husband asked me if I knew anyone. I nodded my head, speechless. I went into my bathroom, turned on the loud fan and cried.

Wendi Winters is someone I worked with through my job. I didn’t know her personally. We didn’t chat on the phone or meet for coffee. We exchanged emails and stories. I attended her annual PR Bazaar, which connects local PR peeps like myself with the local media. Still, to know that someone who I respected professionally as a journalist was murdered in cold blood felt like a punch to the gut. There was nothing I could do for her or her four co-workers.

Most of all I was pissed off.

You see, I spent 13 years of my life as a news producer. I still consider myself a journalist even though I now work in public affairs. I was pissed because someone killed several members of my beloved media family. It doesn’t matter if I knew them well. Hell, it doesn’t matter if I knew them at all. Those of us who have spent a decent amount of time in the profession know that there is a special bond among us newsers.

It was only a matter of time

I wish I could say the shooting surprised me. Honestly, I prepared myself for the fact that I may deal with a shooting in the newsroom every day of my entire 13-year career. Fortunately, the day I dreaded never came. Newsrooms are a hotbed of threatening phone calls and letters. It happens more than you would care to comprehend. Let’s just say it happens to the point that it is commonplace. At every station, this would happen. I would spend nights (I worked third shift for all of those 13 years) thinking about what I would do if one of the wack jobs actually showed up. Would I be able to run? Would I have to fight back? What would I do? One station I worked at a man threatened to kidnap two of our reporters. He stalked the station with one of those white vans. You know, the kind we warn our children to stay away from. The man even made it through security and into the building.  Thankfully, the reporters were not harmed.

At another station, I came face to face with a man high on drugs who broke our sliding security door. He literally pulled it open with one hand. I had gone to the door to see what the knocking was, thinking the cleaners got locked out. I was wrong.  Within seconds, the man was inside. I yelled for my co-workers to hide and call the police. There I was, face to face with a man twice my size, strung out on god knows what. I quickly realized that he wasn’t armed and I was able to stay away and talk him out of the building.  Local and state police showed up, guns blazing.  They were prepared for a much worse situation.  I called my boss. He had the nerve to ask me “What do you want me to do?” I was dumbfounded. I wanted my boss to show up. He didn’t. I was left to deal with the problem on my own, deal with some seriously stressed out co-workers and get the show on the air. My leadership let me down. The issue was never really addressed by any of my leadership.  Not to me, not to the young women who spent part of their night hiding and not to the woman, who we forgot about in the chaos, who was working quietly in another room and was clueless to what took place.

My point is, journalists and newsrooms are targets. The Capital Gazette received threats too. And like newsrooms across the country, they continued to do their job. When it comes down to it, there isn’t really much a newsroom can do to stop the threats. We can call the police, file a report, blah blah blah. At the end of the day, any nut-job with a pump-action shotgun can walk into a newsroom. It only takes a matter of seconds and the damage will be done. Irreversible. Life-altering.

Journalists are not the enemy

Now what? I know one thing is for sure. It will not be thoughts and prayers. While I do pray, I believe that it is more for my benefit. I don’t believe that prayer has some special power to magically change anything. I pray to get my feelings out, to say what I want and need out loud and to express myself. When I pray, it’s a way for me to talk through my feelings and emotions. It’s not something I do thinking G-d will take some sort of action. I believe in my own actions. What can I do to make a difference? In the case of the Capital Gazette shooting, I will attend vigils to show my support for the profession in hopes that the survivors feel less alone. I will give money to the Capital Gazette Families Fund and the Memorial Scholarship Fund. I will also join an organization that supports journalist so that I may be able to help change this ridiculous notion in society that our journalists are enemies of the state. I am reading the Capital Gazette cover to cover and sharing the stories about the victims and the shooting. We owe it to the Capital Gazette to try and feel their pain, to understand the horrors they faced.  I have decided to speak up more when I hear people bashing the profession. I have decided enough is enough.

What are you going to do?

Visiting the memorial

On the 4th of July I visited the makeshift memorial at 888 Bestgate Road. I brought flowers. The second I got out of the car I started crying. I walked to the corner. I placed a rock on Gerald’s marker, took a moment to acknowledge each marker and place my flowers. The memorial is full of flowers, messages and tokens left by a grieving community. I placed my flowers above a sign that read “Journalist are not the enemy.” I walked back to my car, tears running down my face the entire time. I stopped at the marquis for the building where another memorial can be found. WJZ, a local news station, had a camera shoot on the memorial.  I intended to take pictures for this blog but I couldn’t bring myself to do it.  You can find pictures online if you google it.

I went about the holiday feeling very melancholy, but grateful to be alive.

Here’s how you can help

There are a few ways you can help support the Capital Gazette:

1. Subscribe to the Capital Gazette or your local newspaper

2. Donate to the Capital Gazette Families Fund

3. Donate to the Capital Gazette Memorial Scholarship Fund

4. Show support with a locally designed and printed Press On shirt. Proceeds go to the families fund mentioned above.