Petula Dvorak: I’m feeling like a kid in America after the shootings of my fellow journalists
Today I got to feel like a kid again.
Not a kid like in my carefree days of Pop Rocks and cartoon tag. But like a kid in America today.
When I heard about the shooting at the Capital Gazette newspaper in Annapolis, Maryland, I thought this is what it feels like to know that at any moment you can be a hashtag. This is what it feels like to know that someone can come in at any moment and open fire – while you’re sitting at your desk, while you’re doing your work, while anything.
By Thursday evening, we still didn’t know why this latest shooting happened, why at least five people had died. Authorities emphasized that they know of no motive in this latest shooting.
That didn’t stop the Twitterverse from tying it to politics and partisanship.
Was it someone listening to Milo Yiannopoulos implore folks just two days ago to “start gunning journalists down”?
Or someone listening to our president call journalists enemies of the public over and over again.
My newsroom in Washington went into high-security status. The New York Times was protected by NYPD officers. Baltimore police went to the the Sun, which owns the Gazette. It was all out of an abundance of caution. (Editor’s note: The Spokesman-Review has also increased its security measures.)
For all we know it could have been someone settling a domestic dispute with a gun. That has happened all too frequently as well.
What I do know is that for a moment I saw what it must be like for kids who live in a country where there have been 17 school shootings so far this year.
The dozens of journalists gathered Thursday outside the industrial park newsroom of the Gazette were tense. More than usual.
Many of us know these community papers. We got our start there. Some have made careers there.
These are not the people chasing congressmen through the halls of the Capitol, or wrangling with CIA officials for information on the latest terrorist cell. Ever read about the construction on your street, the plans for the new rec center, who won the crab contest, or about the uptick in crime at the mall?
As Gazette community news editor and metro columnist Jimmy DeButts tweeted, “We try to expose corruption. We fight to get access to public records & bring to light the inner workings of government despite major hurdles put in our way. The reporters & editors put their all into finding the truth. That is our mission. Will always be.”
This is local reporting. This is journalism.
Reporters go into neighborhoods people are afraid of, armed with nothing but a notebook and pen. When a town evacuates, they’re the ones heading in, getting soaked and battered by the wind. And sometimes worse, like WYFF-TV reporter Michael McCormick and photojournalist Aaron Smeltzer, who died while chasing a storm in Greenville, S.C., last month.
The reporters at the Gazette aren’t the authors of the fake news so many folks are confused by on their Facebook feeds.
This paper, according to its website, has been around since 1727, when it was the Maryland Gazette. It was one of the first to print the Declaration of Independence in 1776.
It’s been doing this journalism thing for a while.
And like other newspapers, when they get something wrong, they correct it. It was Street, not Avenue. The vote was 4-3, not 5-2. She spells her name Allyson, not Allison. Integrity is at the heart of it all.
Journalists at this paper cover community meetings and state hearings late into the night. They eat crap lunches at their desks while filing their third story of the day. There’s a good chance that some of their cars were not made in this millennium. I know; this was me, for many years.
It’s too easy for politicians looking for a boogeyman to think of reporters as the shrill pundits arguing on TV. They don’t represent the bulk of working journalists.
It’s hard to decide whether this will feel worse if it turns out to be an attack on journalists, rather than a random attack that everyone wants to link to “mental illness.” Somehow, we have digested these uniquely American, scattershot incidents.
Most of us can go to a movie theater, the mall, the grocery store, our cubicle offices and the doctor without really thinking of all the mass shootings that happened there.
We take off our shoes at airports and let guards dip into our pants and blouses so we feel safe.
But what if they are going to our newsrooms and gunning us down simply because of what we do, because of where we are? Is that worse if we know why?
To our kids and teachers, who face this possibility every day, the “why” doesn’t matter. The fact that it keeps happening does.