On June 28, 2018, a gunman walked into the newsroom of The Capital newspaper in Annapolis, Md., and killed five employees. Their names run like a ticker tape in my mind: Gerald Fischman, Rob Hiaasen, Johhn McNamara, Rebecca Smith, Wendi Winters.
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The Capital newspaper and its sister publication, the Maryland Gazette, were my first stops as a 1998 media communications graduate of the College. I had worked with Gerald and John. I knew Wendi and Rob from journalism gatherings. I did not know Rebecca, a new employee in advertising, but it didn’t matter. In the way that happens at small-town newspapers, I had stayed a part of The Capital, an extended family of former and current employees connected by long hours, low pay and a shared belief that local papers mattered. We were all connected, whether we had worked together or not.
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While news organizations had faced workplace shootings in the past, this was the first shooting in the U.S. to target journalists. As I huddled on my bedroom floor that day scouring social media and messaging other former Capital colleagues for updates, it was hard for me to separate the attack from the recent full-frontal assault on the press.
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Like all my colleagues in the industry, we witnessed the vilification and politicalization of the media over the last few years. Since he’d first announced his candidacy, President Donald Trump has called out the “fake news” media. The morning of the attack, he tweeted, “Establishment Government, Media, and Hollywood are killing America. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” Just two days before, right-wing nationalist Milo Yiannopoulos told the Observer, “I can’t wait for the vigilante squads to start gunning journalists down on sight.”
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The Capital shooting, coming so soon after, seemed at first a direct response to the rhetoric, as though it was the culmination of the very pubic declarations against my chosen profession. While ultimately the shooter’s actions were the result of a private grudge held against the paper, it still didn’t remove the sting of the words thrown wholesale against an entire industry. It seemed an attack on democracy itself, a one-off hit to the “Fourth Estate,” the idea that the news media is the stabilizing leg of the three-legged stool of the republic.
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The sanctity of journalism was built into the First Amendment of the Constitution by the Founding Fathers (three of whom were also founders of the College), who believed a free press could investigate and write about government abuses and oversteps, a check-and-balance necessary for a stable democracy. “Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost,” Thomas Jefferson wrote of the only profession protected by the Constitution.
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The shooter may not have been inspired by the words of public and governmental figures, but the attack did highlight an industry facing its own set of challenges. Social media has transformed where and how we get our news and how journalists interact with the public. The blurring of the line between pundit, media personality and straight news journalist has changed how the public views the profession overall. Consolidations at community and national newspapers have left fewer reporters doing more and, ultimately, bring up questions on how, or even whether, the news industry will survive. A cadre of College of Charleston graduates working in journalism today are in the crosshairs of these changes and of a nation divided over the role of the press.
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