Capital Gazette Fulfills Promise, Publishes Day After Shooting
After witnessing the brutal mass shooting that left five colleagues dead and others injured, newsroom staff at the Capital Gazette in Annapolis, Maryland, on Thursday pledged to put out a Friday edition of the local newspaper.
As part of a chain of tweets in which he provided updates and reaction to the massacre, reporter Chase Cook included a defiant promise to readers and those watching the tragedy unfold online.
I can tell you this: We are putting out a damn paper tomorrow.
— Chase Cook (The tiels are Poe and Stanley) (@chaseacook) June 28, 2018
“I can tell you this: We are putting out a damn paper tomorrow,” he wrote.
The sentiment was echoed in a post on the paper’s official Twitter account.
Yes, we’re putting out a damn paper tomorrow. https://t.co/ScNvIK1A4R
— Capital Gazette (@capgaznews) June 29, 2018
In a response to that tweet, the Capital Gazette posted an image of the front page. The images of the staff’s five deceased colleagues were featured prominently above the fold along with the bold headline “5 Shot Dead at The Capital.”
— Capital Gazette (@capgaznews) June 29, 2018
The completed newspaper was published as scheduled and was delivered Friday with one notable difference. The editorial staff of the Capital Gazette chose to leave the paper’s editorial page almost completely blank with a short message printed in the center.
“Today we are speechless,” the editors wrote. “This page is intentionally left blank today to commemorate victims of Thursday’s shootings at our office.”
Tomorrow this Capital page will return to its steady purpose of offering readers informed opinion about the world around them. But today, we are speechless. pic.twitter.com/5HzKN2IW7Q
— Capital Gazette (@capgaznews) June 29, 2018
The note listed the five employees killed: assistant editor Rob Hiaasen, correspondent Wendi Winters, editor Gerald Fischman, staff writer John McNamara, and sales assistant Rebecca Smith.
As Fox News reported, newspaper staff struggled not only with processing the deadly act they had just encountered but with the practical issues associated with putting out a paper in such a chaotic state.
Reporter Pat Ferguson said surviving staff members were “just trying to do their job for the public,” but he and others acknowledged the reigning sense of confusion and anger that resulted from Thursday’s senseless act.
“You’d think something like this might happen in Afghanistan, not in a newsroom a block away from the mall,” he said.
Pat Furgurson, another reporter who was away from the office when the shooting began, said the remaining staff was simply “trying to do our job” while at the same time figuring out how to “deal with five people” suddenly gone.
As the Baltimore Sun reported, Furgurson’s pickup truck served as a makeshift office as he and his colleagues worked on the Friday edition.
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