Chris Churchill
Another mass shooting — this time in a newsroom.
And so yet another madman has gone on a cruel killing spree, one more loner robbing the world of good people for nothing other than the hate in his miserable heart.
This is familiar, of course. These massacres are a ritual that happen in no other country so routinely, and the risk when you see something so often is that you become numb to it. The horror isn’t quite so horrific. The shock fades. Another mass killing? Ho-hum. When will it all stop? Not anytime soon.
This time, the massacre happened at a newspaper. The killer, whose name is not worthy of your brain space, murdered three men and two women in the newsroom of The Capital Gazette, a small newspaper in Annapolis, Md., a lovely capital city on a bay.
The killing is not more horrific because of where it happened or who was killed. A massacre at any
workplace would be just as awful, the lives just as meaningful. We’ve seen mass killings in churches and even in schools, for God’s sake, and nothing haunts more than the killing of children.
But I’ll admit that Thursday’s massacre hit home for me in a way that some others haven’t. That it took place in a newsroom like the one I’m sitting in now makes this endless cycle of violence all the more grim. That it took place at a very small newspaper like ones where I once worked made it more real.
“There is nothing more terrifying than hearing multiple people get shot while you’re under your desk and then hear the gunman reload,” Phil Davis, a crime reporter at The Capital Gazette, said in a tweet read far and wide.
Newsrooms, with their open layouts, all pretty much look alike, the messy desks piled with papers and peppered with empty coffee cups, the photos of children taped next to computer screens, the malnourished plants under fluorescent lights. The rooms aren’t pretty, but they are a home away from home for those of us who do this work.
The people in those rooms get stereotyped, called the liberal media and whatnot, or even enemies of the people, but even the rational generalizations are overstated. Walk into most newsrooms and loudly state a political opinion of any stripe and you can just about guarantee that somebody will rise up to disagree with you. If nothing else, newspaper people like to argue.
I’ve met all kinds of people in newsrooms. Conservatives and liberals and folks in the middle. Evangelicals and atheists and those who just don’t know. But there are also personalities that are common to every newsroom, which is probably why the men and women killed Thursday seem familiar. Their names are worthy of your brain space.
Gerald Fischman, 61, editorial page editor. Rob Hiaasen, 59, assistant editor, columnist and brother to the novelist Carl Hiaasen. Rebecca Smith, 34, sales assistant. Wendi Winters, 65, community correspondent. John Mcnamara, 56, sports writer.
Their professional lives were about telling the stories of their community. There’s honor in that.
The big media outlets, the ones that cover wars and presidents, get most of the attention and take much of the heat. But the work of the littlest newsrooms in the quieter places matters just as much. Often, they are the only news outlets around. Without them, important stories would not be told. Neither would the less important stories.
I won’t pretend that every person in a newsroom, or the one I’m sitting in now, arrives each day thinking about community service or some other high-minded ideal. But the people who work in them could make more money, and have an easier life, doing something else. Something keeps them coming back.
They believe in and enjoy what they do. They believe their work has meaning and purpose.
If you’re reading these words, then it’s likely you agree. And we’re grateful. As you may have heard, this isn’t the easiest time for the newspaper business.
Nor is this an easy time for the county, as we continue to endure this continuing cultural calamity of mass shootings. We’ve lost many good people who lived with meaning and purpose, taken by men frustrated because their lives had neither. They have no motives other than darkness.
So many shining lights have gone dark. And we’re getting used to it.
The horrific is routine, the intolerable is familiar, and first-graders practice active-shooter drills in school.
When will it all stop? Not anytime soon.