Major newspapers assign reporters to ‘Capital Gazette’
By Jaclyn Peiser | The New York Times
Newspapers around the country are offering support to the Baltimore Sun Media Group, the owner of the Capital Gazettechain of community newspapers based in Annapolis, Md., in the wake of a newsroom shooting that killed five employees.
In addition, the American Society of News Editors and the Associated Press Media Editors put out a statement asking newsrooms everywhere to join in a moment of silence on Thursday at 2:33 p.m., exactly one week after the attack, “to honor those who lost their lives and to show support to those who lost family, friends, co-workers and peers.”
The suspect in the shooting, Jarrod W. Ramos, 38, has been charged with five counts of first-degree murder. He is being held without bail.
Trif Alatzas, the publisher and editor in chief of The Baltimore Sun,said the newspapers had gotten immense support from Tronc, the corporate owner
of the Baltimore Sun Media Group. Journalists from Tronc papers — The Chicago Tribune, The Allentown Morning Calland The Virginian Pilot— have gone to Annapolis to help the Capital Gazette staff.
“We have newsrooms across the country,” Mr. Alatzas said in a video posted on The Sun’s website. “Some of the folks who have arrived from those other institutions used to work in Annapolis.”
Joining the effort, The New York Timeshas dispatched Erica L. Green, an education reporter based in Washington, to The Sun, where she was a reporter for seven years. She will work there for a week whileSun reporters fill in at The Capital Gazette.
TheTimes’s Washington bureau chief, Elisabeth Bumiller, and the Washington deputy editor, Jonathan Weisman, said in a memo on Thursday that Ms. Green would be a help to the paper’s depleted staff and that her presence in Baltimore would “be a big morale boost for The Sun newsroom, one of her former editors said.”
Madi Alexander, a data journalist for Bloomberg Government, has started a fund-raising campaign for the victims through GoFundMe. As of Thursday, the campaign had raised nearly $200,000 from more than 3,600 donors.
Tronc has also started a fund for the families of the newsroom workers who were killed in the shooting: Gerald Fischman, 61, the editorial page editor; Rob Hiaasen, 59, an editor and a features columnist; John McNamara, 56, an editor and a sports reporter; Rebecca Smith, 34, a sales assistant; and Wendi Winters, 65, a feature writer.
In addition, the Michael and Jacky Ferro Family Foundation, named for Michael W. Ferro Jr., a former chairman of Tronc, announced that it would match up to $1 million in donations. Further, Tronc has created a scholarship fund for journalism students at the University of Maryland in College Park, where Mr. Fischman and Mr. McNamara were alumni and where Mr. Hiaasen taught.
The suspect in the attack had a longtime grudge against Capital Gazette Communications. In July 2012, he filed a defamation lawsuit against the company after the publication of an article about his guilty plea in a harassment case. Three months later, he filed a fuller complaint alleging invasion of privacy. The lawsuit was dismissed.
