When breaking news hits home

As I boarded the Amtrak in Washington, DC on Thursday, June 28, news was breaking of the mass shooting at The Capital newspaper in Annapolis, Maryland. The sobbing that commenced was uncontrollable.

Passengers closest to me reached over. “I’m so sorry. Did you know them?” one asked. The answer was no, but at the same time, yes. I felt like I knew every single one of them.

I fought patchy WiFi, repeatedly hitting the “read new tweets” button on my 4.5 hour journey home to Hampton Roads. Trying to do my own investigative work, I listed the names of the newsroom I knew of out on paper. I began checking Twitter feeds and one by one marked SAFE or SILENT next to their names.

I never ate dinner. I sobbed when I finally made it home to my husband. I sobbed in the thirty minute hot shower. I sobbed as I stroked my finger against my two sons’ images on the baby monitor. I only put my phone away when confirmation came through on the victims and assailant. And then I sobbed myself to sleep, imagining any one of the people I love in the same situation.

You see, the paper raised me. Not The Capital, per se, but the people that made the collective ‘paper.’

I started working for The Bulletin, a low-circulation, weekly newspaper when I was 20. Small town papers are exactly that: small. No more than 5 people work in your office, yet you’re known by everyone in town as someone who must know things. I was a 20-year-old sales assistant, much like Rebecca Smith, a victim in Thursday’s shooting. I answered phones. I edited ad copy and stories. I ran proofs to small businesses. I helped folks through their crossword mishaps. I comforted families who passed me a picture, trying to find words for their family member’s obituary. I covered bake sales and centennial birthdays, while staff writers covered budget and council meetings.

At small town newspapers, there’s no separation of “church and state." News, sales, circulation–we all live together in our often historical houses. You hear everyone’s conversations regardless of how private it's supposed to be. And everyone is family.

This community was never clearer to me than it was during my time at The Alexander City Outlook, a small Alabama paper on the shores of Lake Martin. I managed a sales department, and headed a monthly lifestyle magazine. My Outlook family changed the way I looked at the world.

Together, we watched the WTC towers fall on 9/11. We had carb-packed potlucks on holidays. We had birthday cake at our desks during phone interviews. We celebrated births and mourned deaths. We had “all hands” calls to bail water out of the mailroom at 1 a.m. so people could get their papers by 5 a.m.

My editor had two trash cans connected by a PVC pipe in her office to accommodate the water flowing from the ceiling during rain storms. And you know what? The paper always got out.

“Miss Fran,” our front desk clerk, knew everyone that walked in the door by name. She knew where they lived, where they went to church. I can still hear her saying she “went to school with their momma or deddy.” Yes, she said daddy as “deddy.” She was so nice, in fact, that she never once corrected folks who insisted they were there to renew their prescriptions.

We treaded carefully on how best to cover our community. After all, if you were at a grocery store or church on Sunday, they'd chase you through the parking lot just to tell you what you missed.

Once, a young staff writer came back from a car wreck, head in his hands. A small group started to gather around his computer screen. On it, a photo of a grandmother sitting on the side of the road next to a family member’s body, covered by a white sheet. The entire building engaged in heated debate over the decision to publish the image. From a storytelling perspective, it was a once in a lifetime shot. It captured the devastation of an accident outside the typical scene of a mangled car. But for the family, and likely the journalist, it’s the image that would haunt them forever.

Occasionally, someone would get mad. You’d hear the reporters asking “So let me ask you this…” only to be hung up on by city officials. We’d get calls from the KKK or parents of kids who got in trouble and ended up on the front page. Once, during the anthrax scare, we got an unmarked tube that sounded like sand being shook on the inside. A couple of brave souls took it outside and opened it wearing gloves and doctor’s office face masks. Upon unsealing, star-shaped confetti and a press release fell out of the inside.

Over my career, all of my parental figures, mentors, and the great loves found in friendship and partnership came from this community. Over the years, I learned who I was, how to treat people, how to lead, how to follow and how to love. At no point, ever, in my newspaper career did I ever feel like someone would walk in and kill me or my friends.

As I moved through 16-years in newspapers, I ended up at the Baltimore Sun, who now owns The Capital. I felt like I’d made it. The lobby was open and expansive. A single security guard sat at a desk in the middle of it. To get to the upper floors, you had to have a key card. To get up to the editorial floor, you had to have a damn good reason.

Sun reporters and editors had Twitter accounts to interact with the communities and beats they served. You could get to know them on a human level. They were accessible. They were transparent. It also left them open to verbal abuse and mudslinging.

Anyone who has worked in community newspapers, or in any media for that matter, felt yesterday’s events. We are all sitting on the side of that road, next to that white sheet.

Yesterday’s events will forever change media in America. One thing it will not change is the passion and dedication of the everyday humans that come together, and now risk their lives, to keep you informed.