Little pay and no glory

On June 28, a shooter claimed five lives at the Capital Gazette in Annapolis, Md. after he shot out the front window of the building that housed the newspaper and roamed the newsroom with a shotgun. The shooter, who has since been identified as Jarrod W. Ramos, had a long-running dispute with the paper that began after “a column in 2011 that detailed his harassment of a high school classmate,” was published days after he pleaded guilty to the misdemeanor charge according the New York Times.

Since then, Ramos had been critical of the paper to the point of threatening violence on social media. A post on a Twitter account supposedly belonging to Ramos even threatened violence shortly before he went to the newspaper and began shooting. Across social media platforms, many are looking to place blame on public figures ranging from Senator Maxine Waters to President Donald Trump to former Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos.

Despite the loss of five staff members, the Capital Gazette continued working to put out the next day’s paper. Chase Cook, a reporter at the Annapolis newspaper, posted on Twitter “I can tell you this: We are putting out a damn paper.” According to the New York Times, Capital Gazette photojournalist Joshua McKerrow grabbed a camera and began taking photographs of the police as they responded to the incident outside the newsroom.

Disgruntled citizens storming into a newsroom is nothing new and has happened with every newspaper whether it’s a small weekly or a national daily. It’s even happened here at the Saratoga Sun more than once. Talk to any former reporter or editor and you will hear a story of a Valley resident coming into the office, no matter where it was located, more than a little hot under the color.

Chuck Box has such a story from just after he started working for the Sun when it was owned by Dick Perue. I won’t tell the story here, but if he ever has a mind to tell it to you, it’s worth a listen. Box happens to be a pretty good storyteller, believe it or not.

Sometimes these grievances have to do with someone feeling we aren’t telling the whole story or we’re just not showing both sides of the issue. Other times, people will come in upset about an editorial or a column that was written and want to express their frustration. Still, other times, someone comes in upset about something else entirely and think that we, as the newspaper, need to cover the issue.

Sometimes we do.

It is not entirely clear at this point if Ramos was motivated by the rhetoric that has been aimed at the news recently. Considering his feud with the Gazette began seven years ago, it is unlikely it did, but there is no knowing for sure at the moment. To be perfectly honest, however, that rhetoric, whether it motivated Ramos or not, has been frustrating and damaging. It has also been increasing in frequency.

President Trump is notorious for using his Twitter to denounce CNN, NBC, etc. after less than flattering news coverage by using the term “Fake News.” Photos from Trump rallies during the election have showed supporters wearing shirts that seemed to support the hanging of journalists. Most recently, Yiannopoulos made the statement “I can’t wait for the vigilante squads to start gunning down journalists on sight.”

Yiannopoulos has since said that he was just “trolling” and never actually intended for anyone to shoot journalists.

Being in the business of journalism can sometimes be a thankless job. Sometimes, supporters of an issue—on one side or the other—are mad at us. At times, even both sides are upset with us. It’s part of the job and we don’t necessarily do it because we want fame or glory, but because we believe that what we are doing is worth the sacrifice. Sometimes, as in the case of the Capital Gazette, that may very well mean our lives.

I’ve only been at the Sun for a few months and I never met and likely never will meet the staff of the Gazette. I will likely never meet the staff of all the papers in Wyoming. I mourn for their loss, however, because working in a place like this, your coworkers become family. You are in the same building, sometimes the same room, for hours on end and will go from joking to yelling at each other and back to joking. Just like a family.

I’ll end this column with a quote from Maria Cramer, a reporter for the Boston Globe, which she posted to her Twitter account the day of the shooting.

“Local newspapers don’t win tons of Pulitzers or cover flashy stories. They cover the zoning board, the planning board, the town budget. They’re often overlooked. But they’re where some of the country’s finest journalists—work for little pay and no glory. Please remember them today.”

 

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