Nieman Foundation at Harvard
In shots that seemed to echo in newsrooms around the country, five staff members of Maryland’s Capital Gazette were killed Thursday in a targeted attack.
The obituaries of the slain — Rob Hiaasen, Wendi Winters, Gerald Fischman, John McNamara, and Rebecca Smith — were completed and online in what seemed like an instant. Capital Gazette journalists put out a damn paper this morning honoring their colleagues and their institution, with the front page story listing ten bylines — what was half their staff.
— Capital Gazette (@capgaznews) June 29, 2018
You can help the Capital Gazette staff right now with this this official GoFundMe, which had raised more than $100,000 out of a $125,000 goal as of Friday morning.
There are playbooks for how to cover mass shootings, especially at schools where copycats drawing from media attention became common. There are guidelines for reporting on traumatic situations and interviewing people reeling from the situations, and for taking care of your mental health in the midst of it all. There’s food. Now, the Baltimore Sun, part of Tronc with the Capital Gazette, is helping by reporting on the tragedy for its neighbors. We’ll update this post with more resources as they are available.
