Survivors of mass killing at Capital Gazette were called journalism heroes, then the buyouts came; most are gone

Three and a half years ago, reporters at the Capital Gazette in Annapolis, Maryland, became First Amendment heroes after putting out the newspaper on its regular schedule the same day five staff members were killed by a gunman who was upset with the paper. Today, their collective and individual stories echo the challenges to local journalism, which seem greater than ever.

"In the years since the shooting, these journalists had become family — and not just because of what they had survived," write Emily Davies and Elahe Izadi of The Washington Post. "They had helped each other through a series of attacks: the physical one in their newsroom and the PTSD that made it hard to get through each day. And together they had faced the existential threat to their industry that compelled longtime colleagues to take buyouts, permanently shuttered their newsroom and, finally, led to their newspaper’s acquisition by a hedge fund with a reputation for deep cost-cutting."

Former reporter Selene San Felice, who had hidden under a desk during the attack, told the Post, “It felt like death all over again in a lot of ways when people would leave to take buyouts. We could feel each other being ripped apart when all we wanted to do was stay.”

"The survivors have confronted these intersecting traumas daily," the Post reports, but perhaps never as directly as throughout the criminal responsibility trial of Jarrod Ramos, which took place in Annapolis three years after he attacked their newsroom and days after Alden Global Capital acquired their paper. . . . The reporters who have stayed at the paper continue to struggle. Rachael Pacella, an education reporter who survived the shooting, had to take a second job at a restaurant in Baltimore to make ends meet. She said she is one of nine full-time newsroom employees left." She told the Post, "That number is so close to how many people died. If five people were gone today from the Capital, there is no way it would be able to move forward."

Alden's reply to the Post was a single sentence: 'The Capital Gazette is a prized jewel in American journalism and we are proud supporters and owners of its critical mission to provide valued local news and information that subscribers rely on.'"