The other day I wrote about how the intersection of violence and journalism is not new.
I wrote the AL.com post not as a request for some pat-on-the- back or attaboy because our profession faces danger at times. As one of the commenters on my column wrote, we knew we what we were signing up for.
Well, that’s true to a degree. At 22, graduating Auburn University in 1982, I probably had no idea I’d be called into an active prison riot a few years later.
For this column, I wrote about some specific cases, that I had personal experience with to vividly show that violence against journalists, or anybody, is not a joke, Milo. This shit is real.
For the opinion column, I got some reaction from fellow Chauncey Baily Project cohorts Josh Richman and Tom Peele to talk about that project which investigated the shotgun shooting death of a journalist in Oakland, Calif.
Today, I got an email from Peele sending me a link to his story.
Here’s the top of Peele’s opinion column including the headline on the East Bay Times.:
Peele: Oakland knows too well the story of a murdered journalist
This latest slaughter must be a touchstone from which respect for journalism returns as a civic value
The press is the “enemy of the American people.” — President Donald Trump.
“I can’t wait for vigilante squads to start gunning down journalists” — Milo Yiannopoulos, provocateur.
Oaklanders know the story too damn well. Someone with a shotgun out to kill a reporter.
The 2007 killing of Oakland Post editor Chauncey Bailey on a city sidewalk was the last slaying of a domestic American journalist over a story.
Until Thursday.
The only thing surprising about the newsroom killings of five Annapolis Capital-Gazette employees is that it didn’t happen sooner. Jarrod Ramos, the alleged shooter, had a longstanding complaint with the paper over a story about his conviction for harassing a woman.
Ramos’ animosity ran on for years through two failed lawsuits in which he represented himself. Then, Thursday, he blasted his way into the paper with a shotgun and killed four journalists and a sales representative.
It came days after Yiannopoulos called for death squads for journalists. He says he was kidding and wrote those words only in a private text. But then he posted them on Instagram.
For the rest of Peele’s column go here.
In my column I also had written about a woman who jumped off the Oakland Tribune building.
Here’s the top of that story.
A woman jumped off our building Friday.
It was a minor news story, this tragedy at the doorstep of the Oakland Tribune.
But it was a gut check for news people who every day write about and present such tragedies. These stories dot our paper, usually summed up in a few brief paragraphs, daily doses of dead bodies — shootings, stabbings, fatal car wrecks and, occasionally (though not often), a public suicide like this one.
But this one was different — it came to us. On a Friday afternoon, the suicide of Mary Jesus jerked us into real life in real time.
That was her name, oddly, Mary Jesus. And, ironically, she was upset about a possible eviction and being homeless for the holidays.
At 1:50 p.m., feet dangling off the ledge, she slid off the seventh-floor roof holding her nose with thumb and forefinger — as if she were taking a plunge into the water. She hit a light pole on the way down, twisted and slammed face-first into the concrete sidewalk near the building’s front door.
Six floors up, through open windows, reporters and editors in the newsroom heard the eerie, collective gasp from the crowd of onlookers. It was an unearthly, anguished sound of more than 100 people simultaneously drawing air. And then, there was the sickening thud.
For the rest of the story go here.
Sears slogan: Where your past is about all we have left.