Honor fallen journalists

Capital Gazette shooting is catalyst for memorial

A year after four journalists and a salesperson were shot to death while at work in their Annapolis newsroom, a movement is afoot to add a memorial in Washington to fallen journalists.

Republican U. S. Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio sponsored a recent bill that would establish the privately funded National Memorial to Fallen Journalists on federal land in the District of Columbia.

Mr. Portman called the proposed memorial a fitting tribute to journalists and broadcasters, including those killed at the Capital Gazette in June 2018, who made the ultimate sacrifice in defense of the First Amendment.

A free press is vital to American democracy, and the journalists who work in it are increasingly targeted both around the world and at home.

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 54 journalists were killed worldwide last year. At least 1,337 journalists have been killed on the job since 1992. In most cases, the journalists are targeted specifically because of their work.

This includes Gerald Fischman, Rob Hiaasen, John McNamara, Rebecca Smith and Wendi Winters, whose alleged killer targeted them at the Capital Gazette because he held a grudge over how the paper had covered his criminal past.

The best honor journalists can hope for is that their work will be read, that it will be appreciated, that it will serve their readers.

A memorial to honor journalists who lost their lives doing that work would be fitting. But anyone who wants to truly honor those journalists and the rest of the profession need not wait for a memorial to be built.

To honor journalists — those who have fallen and those who toil every day to produce work that reveals and explains your community — read their work. Subscribe to your local newspaper. Subscribe to several.

As the work of journalism has gotten more dangerous in recent years, the industry has simultaneously struggled to survive. Circulation has plummeted in recent decades. Many news organizations have slashed their staffs, and, in some cases, newspapers have folded.

The latest newspaper to suffer this fate, Youngstown’s vaunted and honored Vindicator, will close up shop at the end of August after 150 years.

The demise of the Vindicator is a huge blow to journalism and the Mahoning Valley it serves. It is just the latest blow for a region that never fully recovered from the collapse of the steel industry and only last year faced the shuttering of the General Motors Lordstown Assembly Plant.

Now more than ever, Youngstown needs the solid and devoted coverage that the Vindicator has provided for a century and a half. But soon the Vindicator will be no more.

Honor journalists who have been killed with a memorial, yes. But honor them by supporting newspapers too.