Even under fire, they reported the news

RAlan Miller

eporters for The Capital Gazette continued to report about the shooting in their newsroom Thursday even as their wounded colleagues were being treated.

Five died. Several others were wounded in that newsroom in Annapolis, Maryland.

Sadly, we've seen this movie before in too many schools, in theaters and shopping plazas. In this case, the news came to the newsroom in the form of a man with a gun, and journalists quickly did what they always do: They told you what was happening in the latest mass shooting in America.

In this case, they posted updates via social media and to capitalgazette.com.

“Gunman shot through the glass door to the office and opened fire on multiple employees. Can’t say much more and don’t want to declare anyone dead, but it’s bad,” Phil Davis, a Capital Gazette crime reporter, wrote on Twitter as he waited to be interviewed by police. “There is nothing more terrifying than hearing multiple people get shot while you’re under your desk and then hear the gunman reload.”

The Gazette reported on its website that in a subsequent interview, Davis said it “was like a war zone” inside the newspaper’s offices — a situation that would be “hard to describe for a while.”

“I’m a police reporter. I write about this stuff — not necessarily to this extent, but shootings and death — all the time,” he said. “But as much as I’m going to try to