After shooting, reporters work to ‘put out paper tomorrow’
In the shade of a car park in Maryland’s capital Annapolis, three journalists from the Capital Gazette typed grimly away — still without news of colleagues killed or injured when a gunman stormed the publication earlier on Thursday.
“We’re putting out a paper tomorrow,” vowed Chase Cook, one of six reporters at the daily, where the latest mass shooting to rock the US left five people dead.
His photographer colleague Joshua McKerrow had his laptop perched on the back of a pick-up truck. Their deadline had been pushed back to 9:30 pm.
“We’re going to have a paper,” said Cook. “I don’t know what else to do except this,” he said. “We’re just doing our job.”
GUNMAN HELD GRUDGE AGAINST NEWSPAPER
In 2012, Jarrod Ramos, the shooter, brought a defamation lawsuit against Eric Hartley, formerly a staff writer and columnist with publication The Capital, and Thomas Marquardt, then editor and publisher of The Capital, according to a court filing.
In 2015, Maryland’s secondhighest court had upheld a ruling in favour of the Capital Gazette and a former reporter who had been accused by Ramos of defamation.
Accordingtoalegaldocument, the article contended that Ramos had harassed a woman on Facebook and that he had pleaded guilty to criminal harassment. The court agreed that the contents of the article were accurate and based on public records, the document showed. AGENCIES
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