Ryan Pickrell, DCNF
The defiant Capital Gazette published a paper the day after a gunman killed five of its staffers, but one nearly-blank page was particularly heartbreaking.
The suspect, Jarrod Warren Ramos, opened fire on the Annapolis, Maryland newspaper Thursday afternoon with a “long gun,” killing five and injuring several others in a tragic event recognized as the largest mass shooting of journalists in America.
As the reporters and editors grieved, they remained undeterred in their mission to report the news.
I can tell you this: We are putting out a damn paper tomorrow.
— Chase Cook (@chaseacook) June 28, 2018
As promised, the Capital Gazette came out Friday.
But, one page — the opinion section — was left almost completely blank. It simply said, “Today, we are speechless.”
The names of the five victims — Rebecca Smith, John McNamara, Gerald Fischman, Robert Hiaasen, and Wendi Winters — were listed below a sentence explaining that the page was “intentionally left blank” to “commemorate” the victims of Thursday’s shooting.
Beneath the list of the victims was the following note:
“Tomorrow this page will return to its steady purpose of offering our readers informed opinion about the world around them, that they might be better citizens.”
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“[Capital Gazette] reporters [and] editors give all they have every day,” Capital editor Jimmy DeButts wrote on Twitter, “There are no 40 hour weeks, no big paydays – just a passion for telling stories from our [community]. Capital Gazette reporters actually published a story on the shooting on their digital platform as details unfolded Thursday.
Ramos, who has had a long-standing grudge against the Annapolis paper, was arrested and charged with five counts of first-degree murder, according to the Baltimore Sun, which owns the Capital Gazette.
Phil Davis, a Capital Gazette crime reporter, told the Baltimore Sun that the shooting “was like a war zone,” a horrific scene that would be “hard to describe for a while.”
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