Multiple former colleagues of mine were just gunned down

by HullieAndMikes, Yelling at Sam Cane, Dunedin, Thursday, June 28, 2018, 12:21 (2100 days ago)

in Annapolis.

Just your average local newspaper. Shot to pieces.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/crime/bs-md-gazette-shooting-20180628-story.html

I've started and stopped this post a few times

by HullieAndMikes, Yelling at Sam Cane, Dunedin, Friday, June 29, 2018, 06:38 (2100 days ago) @ HullieAndMikes

Maybe it's stupid to post, but writing is my profession and this seems as good a place as any to think out loud.

I've spent most of my life writing about how people got things wrong, so it's possible the initial narrative here--that our current cultural moment played a role in the shooting--is incorrect as well. I don't think it is; this man promised "blood in the boardroom" on Twitter years before he actually pulled up to a newspaper with a shotgun. Both people he held a grudge against had long retired or moved on to other jobs.

It's a grim, Coen brothers-esque situation to think about how much time and energy was spent earlier this week on whether society was coming to pieces because some apparatchik couldn't get her mozzarella sticks. We need to think, long and hard, on power dynamics and who is really hurting who. Who is really being threatened by our words and actions. Whose lives--not just whose posh lifestyles--are really being endangered.

I worked at The Capital from February 2007 to April 2011. I was there on the day when they laid off more than a third of our workforce, and somehow the paper has just gotten smaller and smaller.

The next time you hear someone bash the media, call us "fake news" or the enemy of the people, I want you to think about some of the people who died yesterday:

- Rob Hiassen was one of the kindest editors I ever met. He was hired at a very dark time in the newsroom's life, and came with nothing but optimism and a joy at telling stories. He had not a single iota of jealousy toward his brother. He once spent an hour listening to me bitch about things after covering a boat parade, and never once did he do the logical thing and just tell me to suck it up. The rare person who becomes better and better the more they are seeped in the cynicism around them.

- Gerald Fischman was one of the weirdest people I've ever met. I'm a strident, opinionated person, so I never really agreed with his editorials. But they weren't controversial (which, by the way, unlike the dog whistles I'm hearing, wouldn't have justified anything) and almost 100 percent of the time just asked people to compromise. In a roomful of noise, he communicated almost entirely via post-it note. I doubt he was even capable of harming an insect.

- Wendi Winters spent most of her career writing 5,000 words on teenagers each week. She brought unlimited and essentially undirected enthusiasm to the most dreadful, boring, inane shit that you have to do at a local newspaper. She claimed to have hung out with Andy Warhol and gave out Christmas newsletters that told you all sorts of uncomfortable information about her family's personal life. But if you could cut away the chaff, it left evidence of someone who thought kids--and especially her own, some of whom attended the Naval Academy--were worth endlessly celebrating.

I didn't know the others very well or at all, but I had to tell my current editor that her good friend, John, was likely dead, and helplessly watch her crumble into pieces.

That's who was murdered yesterday -- a humor columnist/features editor, a guy who spent his life quietly asking people to get along, and a woman who wrote about high achieving teenagers. That's who gets included in "enemies of the people" -- and by the way, that's who is most vulnerable. They can't afford security like the Post and NYT. They don't write hard-hitting investigations; they don't have the time or resources. They are just trying to get through the day in hopes that maybe they will in the future earn enough money to move out of their parent's basement or send their kids to college. They write about boat parades, zoning disputes and fucking county fairs. One of my first assignments there was a blowout on a goddamn circus.

You wouldn't believe the bullshit these people have to deal with for just writing about their community. How once a week some yokel would call it The Crab Wrapper and talk about how shitty you are on hour 12 of your daily shift that, oh by the way, you aren't going to get paid overtime for because --wink wink--no one here works more than 40 hours a week. Oh yeah, you're also liberal scum because you don't endorse the state delegate who calls gay people an abomination and will later go on to serve a jail sentence for drunkenly running over a child in his boat. I was probably the most politically radical leftist who has ever worked there, and that was seven years ago and I spent four years being such a pain in the ass to the Democratic governor that they all thought I was a Republican.

It's cheap and easy to take the lens of a tragedy and turn it on yourself. But in 2006, when I was 24, I wrote a story about how the local mayor was struggling with the politics in his new job and another politician had offered his consultant services. The reason I knew was that the politician, a state delegate, had pronounced this on his own volition on our newspaper's public discussion forum. The delegate--who has my unending enmity for this--turned around and posted about how he had to stop now because he didn't know he was being spied on (he started posting again in a few weeks).

A response by a man named RLTW -- short for Rangers Lead the Way -- said that I should be castrated and dipped in kerosene. At the time, all I wanted was him to be banned from the forum. I wonder what I would do if it happened today.

I'm very sorry.

by OGerry @, Maine wilderness, Sunday, July 01, 2018, 15:46 (2097 days ago) @ HullieAndMikes

The whole thing is terrible and senseless. Thank you for helping us know your friends a little better.

how awfully sad.

by Jay ⌂, San Diego, Saturday, June 30, 2018, 11:32 (2098 days ago) @ HullieAndMikes

I don't know what to say. The possibility of being shot at school or the workplace or a concert or anywhere has become a depressing fact of life, and something that has been weighing on me tremendously over the past few years. Sometimes I find myself in a public place thinking about what I would do if someone started shooting, and how I would protect myself and my family. It is so stressful and depressing.

I hope you can find some peace and solace in grieving your colleagues. To invoke a Jewish tribute: may their memory be a blessing.

Very well stated.

by Mark, O Town, Saturday, June 30, 2018, 07:46 (2099 days ago) @ HullieAndMikes

Thanks for granting us deeper insight into this perspective.

--
"2020 ... Let's win it all ..."

Thank you for sharing.

by Angel, Saturday, June 30, 2018, 06:36 (2099 days ago) @ HullieAndMikes

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Thanks for humanizing this tragedy. Much appreciated.

by Greg, seemingly ranch, Friday, June 29, 2018, 10:26 (2099 days ago) @ HullieAndMikes

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I'm so sorry. This post is an amazing tribute

by HumanRobot @, Cybertron, Friday, June 29, 2018, 10:05 (2099 days ago) @ HullieAndMikes

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maximum respect for you

by Captains Corner @, Empty nest in a Dallas high rise, Friday, June 29, 2018, 09:58 (2099 days ago) @ HullieAndMikes

Your remembrance of your colleagues will stay in my heart and mind for as long as I live.

So sorry Hullie.

by Grantland, y'allywood, Friday, June 29, 2018, 09:21 (2099 days ago) @ HullieAndMikes

Do you mind if I share that with my friends here?

Such an important job you do.

I am so terribly sorry.

by irishvol @, Music City, USA, Friday, June 29, 2018, 09:04 (2099 days ago) @ HullieAndMikes

I can't think of anything more appropriate to say. I feel incredibly sorry for those directly affected by this (including you). And I feel incredibly sorry that we've gotten to this point culturally. It shouldn't be this way.

Thank you for sharing that.

by KGB, Belly o. the Beast, Friday, June 29, 2018, 09:00 (2099 days ago) @ HullieAndMikes
edited by KGB, Friday, June 29, 2018, 11:01

There are too many thankless, poorly-paid professions in our society to begin to count, but journalism is one of the few that shoulders a special degree of misery because of its exposure to the ever-agitated, anonymous cranks out in the local community. Of course, these people have always been floating around, for as long as newspapers and other periodicals have been made available to the public. But the turn our society has taken over the past 20 years -- more electronic, a greater degree of misinformation, no shortage of communication but less personal interaction and more self-imposed walls separating one another -- has made the prospect of such discord with the audience potentially much darker and more foreboding than it was in the past. It's difficult enough to work in that industry and do more with less every single year for a depressing wage without also having to fear for your life in the workplace over something that has practically no connection to you whatsoever. Someone would really have to love what they do to stay in the business, and I respect the shit out of you and your colleagues for going back to it every single day, day after day.

I am so incredibly sorry for your loss and that of your friends and colleagues.

A moving and fitting tribute.

by hobbs, San Diego, CA, Friday, June 29, 2018, 08:20 (2100 days ago) @ HullieAndMikes

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Thanks for coming back and posting.

by PMan @, The Banks of the Spokane River, Friday, June 29, 2018, 08:11 (2100 days ago) @ HullieAndMikes

Wow.

I'm sorry.

by MattG, Friday, June 29, 2018, 07:54 (2100 days ago) @ HullieAndMikes

This is so sad and infuriating and scary, and you put it in such human terms. I don't know why we choose to live like this.

Wow. Beautiful tribute to your friends

by Jack @, Friday, June 29, 2018, 07:46 (2100 days ago) @ HullieAndMikes
edited by Jack, Friday, June 29, 2018, 07:50

I have to tell you I had to start and stop reading it, too.

Extremely powerful

by Mike (bart), Friday, June 29, 2018, 07:28 (2100 days ago) @ HullieAndMikes

I don't know if this is something you would want to or feel comfortable publishing, but a wide audience would do well to read it

Brilliant post. Thanks for sharing these stories.

by HCE, Friday, June 29, 2018, 06:49 (2100 days ago) @ HullieAndMikes

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May their memory be a blessing

by Chris (HCC) @, Paradise, Friday, June 29, 2018, 06:20 (2100 days ago) @ HullieAndMikes

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Terribly sorry, man. No words are adequate

by scriptcomesfirst @, Thursday, June 28, 2018, 22:00 (2100 days ago) @ HullieAndMikes

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Awful. My condolences.

by San Pedro @, Thursday, June 28, 2018, 20:04 (2100 days ago) @ HullieAndMikes

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You have my deepest sympathy.

by NDinVA @, Yorktown, VA, Thursday, June 28, 2018, 17:40 (2100 days ago) @ HullieAndMikes

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Horrible. I'm so sorry.

by nedhead, Thursday, June 28, 2018, 16:58 (2100 days ago) @ HullieAndMikes

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Jesus. I'm sorry man

by Mike (bart), Thursday, June 28, 2018, 16:51 (2100 days ago) @ HullieAndMikes

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Terrible and awful. So sorry Hullie

by Pat, in the cloud, Thursday, June 28, 2018, 16:46 (2100 days ago) @ HullieAndMikes

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I am so very sorry.

by Angel, Thursday, June 28, 2018, 16:10 (2100 days ago) @ HullieAndMikes

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I am so sorry

by JD in Portland @, Portland OR, Thursday, June 28, 2018, 15:24 (2100 days ago) @ HullieAndMikes

Another banner day for the NRA and tragic day for America

Horrible. So sorry.

by oviedoirish @, Oviedo, Florida, Thursday, June 28, 2018, 14:34 (2100 days ago) @ HullieAndMikes

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I am so sorry.

by River, Hell of the Upside Down Sinners, Thursday, June 28, 2018, 14:22 (2100 days ago) @ HullieAndMikes

We live in a fucked up country these days.

Stay strong man

by hobbs, San Diego, CA, Thursday, June 28, 2018, 13:18 (2100 days ago) @ HullieAndMikes

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Ugh. Tragic. So sorry.

by Greg, seemingly ranch, Thursday, June 28, 2018, 12:53 (2100 days ago) @ HullieAndMikes

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Tragic

by PasadenaDomer @, Thursday, June 28, 2018, 12:47 (2100 days ago) @ HullieAndMikes
edited by PasadenaDomer, Thursday, June 28, 2018, 12:52

I can’t even fathom what you are going through, let alone the families, when a national epidemic hits home. I am so sorry.

I'm really sorry.

by domer.mq ⌂ @, Thursday, June 28, 2018, 12:46 (2100 days ago) @ HullieAndMikes

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--
Sometimes I rhyme slow sometimes I rhyme quick.

Milo Yiannopoulos asked his followers to kill journalists

by MattG, Thursday, June 28, 2018, 12:25 (2100 days ago) @ HullieAndMikes

Two days ago.

The President incites violence against journalists every day.

Given a nation of millions, someone was going to listen.

Here's the Milo story:

https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2018/06/27/milo-wants-vigilantes-start-killing-jour...

Came here to post this subject with

by hobbs, San Diego, CA, Thursday, June 28, 2018, 13:02 (2100 days ago) @ MattG
edited by hobbs, Thursday, June 28, 2018, 13:06

Milos statement as a small backdrop. This is exactly why you don't urge confrontation like Maxine Waters did. There are people out there who will hear something different from what you intended and take action on those thoughts.

As a public official you don't want to own the action of some twisted person. You don't want to be anywhere near it.

FWIW, the President is the biggest violator of this rule. So far he's escaped without his words having any consequences. So far!

Milo should be arrested.

by Grantland, y'allywood, Thursday, June 28, 2018, 13:34 (2100 days ago) @ hobbs

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I hesitate to post this but

by hobbs, San Diego, CA, Thursday, June 28, 2018, 13:45 (2100 days ago) @ Grantland

Hannity has already blamed Maxine Waters and Obama for the shooting.

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