he phrase “the new normal” has been thrown around since the COVID-19 pandemic began, and as America struggles to define—and design—what that is exactly, colleges are paving the way for what it might look like.

After the chaos and uncertainty of 2020, colleges and universities throughout the Baltimore region began to find their groove as they moved into the 2021-2022 school year. Coronavirus safety committees had been erected, new mandates put in place, safety protocols implemented—everything from vaccine requirements to temperature checks to quarantine procedures and wastewater testing that can pinpoint a COVID infection before anyone is symptomatic.

By some counts, colleges may very well be the safest places to live and work.

“Just following simple rules of wearing face masks and social distancing, using wastewater management and testing when we need to, we have, in many ways, been able to return to normal life,” says Goucher College President Kent Devereaux. “Full athletics, student clubs, dining in the dining hall, use of the library—everything that you’d normally have, we’ve been able to return to.”

Despite the challenges and anxieties faced by students, staff, and faculty alike, some unexpected silver linings have emerged.

“It’s just incredible to watch how it’s grown into the vision that we, as a group of students, had.”

The widespread adoption of technology across college campuses has proven to provide more flexibility, efficiency, and innovation—and even accessibility, in some cases. Counseling sessions, for example, began to be conducted remotely during the pandemic and many students found that they preferred it to in-person sessions. Students who cannot, for whatever reason, make it to an in-person class can now study from anywhere.

Challenging times, combined with advances in technology and the general acceptance of it, have also brought more cooperation and collaboration among schools. It’s becoming more common, for example, for schools that offer complementary programs to partner with one another to offer students an educational pathway to continue studies in their chosen areas. That may mean a discounted tuition rate, a transfer of class credits, or an internship through a partner school.

Maybe most importantly though, schools, at their best, foster an environment where students are supported, expand who they are, and connect with like-minded people. At a time when gathering together is not always safe, being in a community has become even more precious, and students have found new ways to connect.

OCA Mocha, a coffeehouse in Arbutus founded by University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) students, is one example of how effective a gathering place can be at a time when people are craving human connection. What started as a class assignment—to design a community center of some sort—has become a gathering place not just for UMBC students and alumni, but the Arbutus community at large.

“We’ve heard a lot of stories from people who are extremely grateful to have this space,” says Michael Berardi, UMBC class of 2019 and co-founder and general manager of OCA Mocha, which stands for Opportunities for Community Alliances. The coffee shop includes a stage, a community room, and an art gallery, employs UMBC students and alumni, and provides internship opportunities for current UMBC students.

“We have local groups and organizations that meet regularly in our community space and are grateful to not have to meet in someone’s living room or church basement,” says Berardi. “We see a lot of connections being made. It’s just incredible to watch how it’s grown into the vision that we, as a group of students, had.”

We checked in with colleges and universities throughout the region to find out what’s new and what campus life and classes look like, two years into the pandemic.

COPPIN STATE UNIVERSITY
A historically Black institution founded in 1900, Coppin State University is situated in the heart of Baltimore City in the Mondawmin neighborhood. Part of the University System of Maryland in Baltimore, the school offers 32 undergraduate and 11 graduate degrees, along with nine certificate programs and one doctorate degree. It’s been rated No. 4 Best HBCU in the Nation (College Consensus), the Top 5 Best Value Online Program (Online School Center), and No. 17 Best Value in the Nation (College Consensus).

In the summer of 2021, CSU announced its Student Debt Relief Initiative, which clears roughly $1 million in student balances and provided a $1,200 credit to every student enrolled in the fall 2021 semester. CSU also created the Freddie Gray Student Success Scholarship, which is available to graduates of Carver Vocational-Technical High School, where Gray was a student.

Coppin also takes esports (competitive video gaming) seriously. In the fall of 2021, Coppin became the first HBCU to open a building on campus exclusively devoted to esports. The Premier Esports Lab opened in September with a guest appearance from Grammy-nominated artist Cordae.

• SIZE OF STUDENT BODY: 2,383 undergraduates, 341 graduates
• STUDENT TO FACULTY RATIO: 13:1
• ANNUAL TUITION: $6,809 in-state, $13,334 out-of-state
• ACCEPTANCE RATE: 40%
• POPULAR AREAS OF STUDY: Nursing, Business, Biology, Education, and Criminal Justice, Rehabilitation Counseling

DICKINSON COLLEGE
Founded in 1783, Dickinson College is a liberal arts college in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, with a suburban campus that spans 144 acres. The school offers 41 undergraduate degrees within 17 fields of study.

It’s been rated as one of the best schools in the country for its sustainability efforts, which include an 80-acre, USDA-certified organic farm. Princeton Review rated it No. 2 in the Top 50 Green Colleges, and it was rated No. 2 in Overall Top Performers among baccalaureate institutions in the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education’s “Sustainable Campus Index” in 2019 and 2020.

• SIZE OF STUDENT BODY: 2,345
• STUDENT TO FACULTY RATIO: 9:1
• ANNUAL TUITION: $58,708
• ACCEPTANCE RATE: 52%
• POPULAR AREAS OF STUDY: International Business, Economics, Political Science & Government, International Relations & National Security, General Psychology

GETTYSBURG COLLEGE
Gettysburg College, a private, liberal arts school, sits on 225 acres adjacent to the historical Gettysburg Battlefield in Pennsylvania. Many of the buildings on campus are historically significant, so it’s no wonder that it draws students interested in studying history.

The school offers 65 academic programs, more than 120 campus clubs and organizations, and 800 events on campus each year, plus more than 100 study-abroad opportunities open to students.

Its Majestic Theater serves as a venue for the greater Gettysburg community, hosting national acts as well as performances by the school’s Sunderman Conservatory of Music students.

It’s ranked No. 12 for “students who study the most” by the Princeton Review, which also ranked Gettysburg College’s dining hall No. 9 in the country for best campus food.

• SIZE OF STUDENT BODY: 2,600
• STUDENT TO FACULTY RATIO: 10:1
• ANNUAL TUITION: $59,960
• ACCEPTANCE RATE: 56%
• POPULAR AREAS OF STUDY: Political Science, Economics, Health Sciences, Organization and Management Studies, History, Psychology

GOUCHER COLLEGE
A private, liberal arts college in Towson, Goucher College prides itself on its close-knit community.

Goucher was extremely proactive when it came to COVID-19 precautions, being the first in the state to implement wastewater testing, which is able to isolate COVID infections by dorm.

Also of note: The college recently opened two new residence halls as part of the school’s First-Year Village. One hundred percent of Goucher students study abroad, and the school is committed to sustainability.

Most recently, Goucher has begun exciting partnerships with other schools, such as Johns Hopkins University, Loyola University, and more to come, to provide a pathway for students to continue their education beyond Goucher. For instance, their 4+1 MBA Program allows students to earn an advanced business degree through Loyola via a “Fast Track” admission process, and at a 15% discount on tuition.

SIZE OF STUDENT BODY: 1,100
STUDENT TO FACULTY RATIO: 9:1
ANNUAL TUITION: $48,000
ACCEPTANCE RATE: 79%
POPULAR AREAS OF STUDY: Psychology, International Relations, Economics, Political Science, Business Administration

JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
Johns Hopkins University (JHU) offers nine academic divisions and hundreds of courses of study, with campuses spread throughout Baltimore, including the Peabody Institute, a music and dance conservatory in Mount Vernon. Its main Homewood campus is located on North Charles Street.

The prestigious, world-renowned university has a strong reputation for its public health and medical studies and has been compared to Ivy League schools.

One of its points of pride is its financial aid program, which covers 100% of calculated need for every admitted student, without loans. This means JHU works with families to calculate what they can afford to contribute toward the total cost of attendance—including meals, books, travel, and other expenses—and JHU covers the rest with grants that don’t need to be repaid.

This school year, JHU added two new minors: Latin American Studies and Writing Seminars.

It also announced new efforts this year to move toward a broader, more flexible undergraduate educational experience that will include a required first-year seminar and the streamlining of major requirements to allow for greater intellectual exploration.

• SIZE OF STUDENT BODY: 6,333 undergraduates, 22,559 graduates
• STUDENT TO FACULTY RATIO: 6:1
• ANNUAL TUITION: $56,313 for Peabody Institute, $58,720 for the School of Engineering and the School of Arts and Sciences
• ACCEPTANCE RATE: 9%
• POPULAR AREAS OF STUDY: Computer Science, Molecular and Cellular Biology, Neuroscience, Economics, Public Health Studies, International Studies

LOYOLA UNIVERSITY
This private, Jesuit institution offers undergraduate and graduate programs on a beautiful urban campus in northern Baltimore City. Education at Loyola is based in the Jesuit tradition of scholarship cura personalis, or care for the whole person. Loyola is known for its academic rigor while helping students lead purposeful lives. Seventy percent of students study abroad. It currently ranks fourth in best universities in the North region according to U.S. News & World Report.

• SIZE OF STUDENT BODY: 3,787 undergraduates, 1,353 graduates
• STUDENT TO FACULTY RATIO: 12:1
• ANNUAL TUITION: $53,430
• ACCEPTANCE RATE: 80%
• POPULAR AREAS OF STUDY: Business, Management, Marketing, Journalism, Social Sciences, Biological and Biomedical Sciences, Psychology, English Language and Literature, Engineering and Education.

McDANIEL COLLEGE
McDaniel College sits in a bucolic setting near Westminster in Carroll County. The private, four-year liberal arts college offers more than 70 undergraduate programs of study and more than 20 graduate programs. McDaniel’s most recent addition to its curriculum is a National Security Fellows Program that provides students with knowledge, skills, and experience in national security as well as the ability to specialize in an area of interest, such as interstate conflict, intrastate political violence, cybersecurity, ethics, and human rights.

Also new this year, McDaniel appointed an inaugural associate provost for equity and belonging who provides vision and leadership to the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and works in collaboration with the provost to co-lead the college’s diversity, equity, and inclusion administrative committee, and guides the Bias Education Response Support Team.

The school also launched a new STEM Center to serve as a physical hub to support students studying the sciences. It hosts workshops and other events while also supplying online and hybrid support.

• SIZE OF STUDENT BODY: 1,757 undergraduates, 1,324 graduates
• STUDENT TO FACULTY RATIO: 13:1
• ANNUAL TUITION: $46,336
• ACCEPTANCE RATE: 81%
• POPULAR AREAS OF STUDY: Kinesiology, Business Administration, Psychology, Biology, Political Science, International Studies

MORGAN STATE UNIVERSITY
The largest of Maryland’s HBCU’s (Historically Black Colleges and Universities), Morgan is a public institution founded in 1867. It is situated in northeast Baltimore. As a Carnegie-classified high research (R2) institution, Morgan provides instruction to a multiethnic, multiracial, multinational student body and offers more than 140 academic programs at undergraduate and graduate levels. As Maryland’s Preeminent Public Urban Research University, Morgan fulfills its mission to address the needs and challenges of the modern urban environment through intense community level study and pioneering solutions.

• SIZE OF STUDENT BODY: 6,270 undergraduates, 1,364 graduates
• STUDENT TO FACULTY RATIO: 15:1
• ANNUAL TUITION: $8,008 for in-state and $18,480 for out-of-state
• ACCEPTANCE RATE: 73%
• POPULAR AREAS OF STUDY: Civil Engineering, Communications Engineering, Business Administration and Management, Social Work, Biology/Biological Sciences, Architecture, Finance, Psychology, Sociology

NOTRE DAME OF MARYLAND UNIVERSITY
A private, Catholic liberal arts university in northern Baltimore, Notre Dame of Maryland University offers programs from undergraduate through PhD, as well as Maryland’s only women’s college. It recently launched the first master’s of art degree in Art Therapy program in the state.
The beautiful, wooded campus is just steps from the bustling downtown Baltimore culture. With values rooted in Catholicism, the school focuses on service to others and social responsibility.

• SIZE OF STUDENT BODY: 783
• STUDENT TO FACULTY RATIO: 7:1
• ANNUAL TUITION: $39,675
• ACCEPTANCE RATE: 88%
• POPULAR AREAS OF STUDY: Nursing, Education, Biology, Art Therapy, Pharmacy

TOWSON UNIVERSITY
One of the largest public universities in the state, Towson University offers more than 60 undergraduate majors and continues to draw students from other states, though it remains part of the University System of Maryland.

Its campus continues to expand, with a huge new dining hall, a 23,000-foot recreation and fitness facility with an indoor swimming pool, and its 5,200-seat arena for sporting events and concerts. In 2021, it opened its new Science Complex, the largest academic building on campus at 320,000 square feet.

In September, Towson opened its StarTUp at the Armory, a space for startups and new businesses to engage with the broader community and larger businesses. It serves as a home to Towson’s entrepreneurship programs, as well as student competitions and events.

While Towson remains the largest supplier of medical professionals and educators in the state, the university has also built a strong reputation for its College of Fine Arts and Communication, as well as its Asian Arts & Culture Center, both of which bring students into the wider community and the Baltimore community to Towson for enriching performing arts, music, and visual art programs.

• SIZE OF STUDENT BODY: 17,907 undergraduates, 2,949 graduates
• STUDENT TO FACULTY RATIO: 16:1
• ANNUAL TUITION: $7,100 in-state, $22,152 out-of-state
• POPULAR AREAS OF STUDY: Business Administration, Education, Nursing, Exercise Science, Psychology, Sociology and Anthropology, Biology, Computer Science, Information Technology

UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND, BALTIMORE
University of Maryland, Baltimore is Maryland’s only public health, law, and human services university. Located in downtown Baltimore, it offers 86 degree and certificate programs through its six nationally ranked professional schools—dentistry, law, medicine, nursing, pharmacy, and social work—and an interdisciplinary graduate school.

The school’s 14-acre BioPark is Baltimore’s biggest biotechnology cluster, employing 1,000 people, and remains on the cutting edge of new drugs, treatments, and medical devices.

• SIZE OF STUDENT BODY: 7,244
• ANNUAL TUITION: Varies by school
• POPULAR AREAS OF STUDY: Medicine, Law, Dentistry, Pharmacy, Nursing, Social Work

UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND, BALTIMORE COUNTY
University of Maryland, Baltimore County educates a campus of more than 10,000 students in programs spanning the arts, engineering, information technology, humanities, sciences, preprofessional studies, and social sciences. Located on the edge of Baltimore County, it allows easy access into the city and all the conveniences of suburban life and housing. It also offers plenty of opportunities for study abroad.

In the fall of 2021, UMBC opened the Center for Well-Being, a new two-story complex that houses Retriever Integrated Health, Student Conduct and Community Standards, and i3b’s Gathering Space for Spiritual Well-Being. UMBC’s already significant NASA partnerships have continued to grow. In October, NASA announced a major award of $72 million over three years for the new Goddard Earth Sciences Technology and Research II center. UMBC is leading the national consortium and will receive over $38 million. The GESTAR II consortium will support over 120 researchers, creating extensive opportunities for breakthroughs in Earth and atmospheric science research, and providing major opportunities for students to conduct research and be mentored by NASA scientists and engineers.

• SIZE OF STUDENT BODY: 13,638
• STUDENT TO FACULTY RATIO: 17:1
• ANNUAL TUITION: $12,280 in-state, $28,470 out-of-state
• ACCEPTANCE RATE: 81%
• POPULAR AREAS OF STUDY: Computer and Information Sciences and Support Services, Biological and Biomedical Sciences, Social Sciences, Psychology, Visual and Performing Arts

 

Cited tuition costs exclude room and board and books.

When his wife wasn’t around and he “started thinking about things,” they got even worse as his mind drifted back to the afternoon of June 28, 2018 and the brutal deaths of Gerald Fischman, Rob Hiaasen, John McNamara, Rebecca Smith, and Wendi Winters. One moment Gillespie had been editing photos of an Anne Arundel County crew pulling up stormwater piping, the next he was hiding, terrified, beneath his desk. During a break in the shotgun blasts, Gillespie had raced past Winters’ prostrate body and through the newsroom’s shattered glass doors, yelling for help at a nearby bank.

A half a year later, he was unable to get much done unless he was on an assignment for work, passing the hours at home staring at the television and surfing the internet. He was sinking further into depression, and he knew it.

A documentary he caught about the austere, black-and-white portrait work of British photographer Platon Antoniou eventually offered a flicker of creative inspiration and a small promise of relief. Gillespie decided he’d make some portraits in a style similar to the simple set-up Antoniou utilized in his celebrity portraiture. He cleaned out a makeshift studio space in his basement. Then he wondered, “Who can I get to sit for me?”

When Time named the Capital Gazette team a “Person of the Year” and pulled the staff together for their December cover image, Gillespie was reminded how much he loved his colleagues. He asked a few of them to sit first. Fellow photographer Joshua McKerrow came over and posed with one of his own cameras. Reporter Pat Ferguson placed a baseball cap with the words “Not the Enemy” on the table in front of him. Reporter Chase Cook—whose tweet, “I can tell you this: We are putting out a damn paper tomorrow,” went viral an hour after the mass shooting—held a copy of their newspaper. Others, too, stopped by and sat for Gillespie.

Twenty-year-old Summerleigh Winters Geimer, wearing a “Journalism Matters” T-shirt, brought a graduation picture with her deceased mother. So far, Gillespie’s ongoing project: “Journalists Matter: Faces of the Capital Gazette,” includes more than a dozen and a half portraits.

“I borrowed the idea from Platon, but I’d like to think I’ve made it my own. For one thing, my basement ceiling is only 7 feet, so everyone’s sitting in my portraits,” Gillespie says with laugh. “I’ve tried to capture who each person is and bring that out. It’s been a creative outlet and something I have complete control over, which feels good.

“They’ve also been therapy sessions,” Gillespie acknowledges. “We started talking about the portrait and we end up talking about that day.”

The evening after the single deadliest attack on American journalists in recent history, hundreds of Anne Arundel County readers and residents walked in a candlelight vigil for the shooting victims down historic Main Street in Annapolis. Hundreds more attended the heartbreaking memorials and services for Fischman, Hiaasen, McNamara, Smith, and Winters. In the days that followed, editor Rick Hutzell pulled an already tight-knit newsroom even closer together. Despite their own shock and suffering, they kept reporting on local law enforcement efforts, the suspect’s complicated history with the paper, and the community’s outpouring of grief. They penned heart-wrenching first-person recollections of their colleagues and kept reporting the news, too, earning a Pulitzer citation for their courage and compelling journalism in the wake of the horrific tragedy.

Hutzell called the Pulitzer “a great and terrible honor.”

Led by some of its young staffers, Capital reporters and photographers have not only managed to put out a great local newspaper every day since last June, but form a union, the Chesapeake News Guild, winning volunteer recognition from Tribune Publishing. Through it all, they’ve pressed on through near-constant reminders of their loss and trauma.

“I don’t like the phrase ‘moving forward,’” says Cook after covering the funeral of longtime Maryland Speaker of the House Michael Busch, who passed away toward the end of the 2019 General Assembly. “I’m an Annapolis reporter, and I have to be here, but covering this funeral made me think about the five other funerals I attended for my friends this past year.

“You find a way to keep going because you have no other choice.”

Those killed in the attack of the 135-year-old newspaper were four veteran journalists and Capital editors and Smith, a sales assistant who sat near the front door and was admired for her kind nature. Whether the editors were specifically targeted among the staff remains unknown. (The suspect, whose trial has been pushed to November, held a deep grudge against the paper, but it was linked to a lawsuit that named a former columnist and former editor who are no longer there.) Gerald Fischman, a quiet, exacting professional with a wickedly dry sense of humor, was the longtime editor of The Capital editorial page and “the best writer I have ever had the privilege to know,” reporter Danielle Ohl says. Writer and editor Rob Hiaasen, who previously worked as a feature reporter at the Baltimore Sun, was probably the best known of Capital journalists among Maryland media circles. Older Sun colleagues recall Hiaasen’s humor, storytelling ability, and deft touch on the page; younger colleagues gush about the 6-foot-5 gentle giant’s intelligence and light touch as an editor and mentor. John McNamara, a dedicated, old-school journo and obsessed local sports fan—he authored books about the history of the University of Maryland football and basketball programs—most recently served as the jack-of-all-trades editor of the Bowie Blade-News and the Crofton-West County Gazette. Wendi Winters knew everyone in Annapolis and everyone knew her.

The daughter of a Naval Academy graduate and mother of four, including three Navy officers, Winters led a Girl Scout troop, participated in Unitarian Universalist Church of Annapolis activities, and organized biannual blood drives. Journalism had been her third vocation, following careers in fashion and public relations. She found her calling as a community reporter, which she did on a freelance basis for more than a decade before The Capital finally hired her fulltime. She wrote “Teen of the Week” and “Home” columns, and pointed readers to overlooked, and sometimes secret, spaces and places in her “Off Limits” series.

Incredibly, the 65-year-old Winters grabbed her trash can and recycling bin and charged the shooter, likely saving the lives of several of her 11 colleagues in the office at the time of the attack. Just weeks before, Winters had taken an active shooter training at her church, where a police officer presented the options: Run, if possible. Hide, if not. And finally, fight only as a last resort to save yourself and others. Maryland’s Capitol Hill delegation, including retired Sen. Barbara Mikulski, formally requested that the White House award Winters the Presidential Medal of Freedom. (Not surprisingly, given the current occupant of the White House’s hostility toward the press, Maryland’s congressional delegation has not yet received a response.)

Janel Cooley, a sales consultant, told The Capital that Winters shouted, “No! You stop that!” or “You get out of here!” as if she were shooing a bully from a schoolyard. At an Annapolis blood drive earlier this year in Winters’ honor, which brought in hundreds of donors, 25-year-old Montana Geimer said she was not surprised by her mother’s actions. “She wanted to protect her co-workers. That’s who she was,” Geimer says. “So many people who I don’t even know have come up and told me stories about my mom.”

“It just rang true to me when I read what she said [to the attacker],” Geimer continues, adding with a smile through some tears, “I’ve heard that voice before.”

As Winters’ children are honoring their mother through their volunteer work with the blood drives, Rob Hiaasen’s wife, Maria Hiaasen, and John McNamara’s, Andrea Chamblee, are honoring their deceased husbands by getting their literary passion projects published. Hiaasen’s first novel, Float Plan, was released last fall by Loyola University’s Apprentice House Press. A collection of his columns is due to be published June 28, which the General Assembly unanimously named “Freedom of the Press Day” in recognition of the fallen journalists.

Hiaasen spent years on the book (his older brother, Carl, is an accomplished novelist), writing on nights and weekends in his Timonium home. In the car, on vacation, between work, he filled notebooks and Post-its with scratches about the characters, amalgamations of him and his wife and people they knew.

“It brings a lot of joy to me and our children in seeing the fulfillment of Rob’s dream—and our dream for him, but it’s bittersweet,” says Maria Hiaasen. “He should be here for this.” The novel, she adds, tells the story of math teacher Will Larkin, who in one disastrous year loses his marriage, job, boat, and basset hound. A “float plan” is literally a written plan that boaters like Hiaasen, who grew up in Florida, file with a reliable person or rescue agency in case something goes awry. The title is a metaphor for surviving “the loss of the thing you care about the most,” says his wife. “And we lost him. It turns out he left us instructions how to manage. But it doesn’t change the fact the house is empty when I get home from work, and I still wait for him. Or that, for the first time, I’m not looking forward to the end of the school year because I will be alone this summer.”

Chamblee, an FDA attorney, is getting her husband’s final labor of love, a collection of Washington, D.C.-area hoop stories and photographs, published this fall through Georgetown University Press. Similarly, Erica Fischman, who recited a selection of her husband Gerald’s poetry at his funeral, has said she’s considering organizing a collection of her husband’s poems.

Hiaasen and Chamblee have also turned their grief into political action. Both have become outspoken gun violence prevention advocates, fighting this past General Assembly to close a long gun loophole that could’ve prevented future murderers from legally purchasing the pump-action shotgun used at the Capital Gazette. Rachel Pacella, who covers Bowie and the environment and survived the shooting, made a difficult decision for a journalist and also testified on behalf of the bill. It did not pass, however. “The way I feel about the advocacy is that I want to prevent the next family from going through what we did,” Chamblee says, adding she and her husband counted the days to their retirement together daily—“March 21, 2021—1,008 from the day he was killed.”

“The vision John and I had for our future was blown up. Needlessly,” Chamblee says. “These gun deaths are needless, that’s part of what makes it so painful.” Both Hiaasen and Chamblee were named vice-chairs of Anne Arundel County’s Gun Violence Prevention Task Force by County Executive Steuart Pittman.

“What happens,” says Hiaasen, a former journalist who met her husband when both worked at the Palm Beach Post, “is you become a member of a club you never wanted to belong to. I can’t tell you how many people I’ve met who’ve told me about a family member or friend who was shot. Sometimes it’s a sibling. Sometimes it’s a girlfriend who was a victim of domestic violence.” Two members of the gun violence survivors network Hiaasen met at a forum at the National Cathedral in Washington this year were the parents of Alison Parker, the Virginia television news reporter killed along with photographer Adam Ward in 2015. It was just one more reminder, she says, that journalists are working in an ever more fraught environment today.

The killing of five American newspaper employees reverberated around the world last summer because it targeted the press specifically, standing out among the epidemic of mass shootings long plaguing the country. In turn, it placed the Capital Gazette staff, used to reporting events, including murders and trials, squarely in the middle of not one, but two issues dividing us like no others over the past few years. The first is the epidemic-level of gun violence and mass shootings, and the inability of elected leaders to address a crisis that killed nearly 40,000 people, including suicides, last year.
The second, more recent, is the rhetoric from the contentious president of the United States, who habitually directs tirades at journalists.

Donald Trump’s “enemy of the people” characterizations of the press and occasional incitements of violence at his rallies can’t help but create an environment in which individuals with violent tendencies are more likely to lash out against the press, says CNN’s media critic Brian Stelter, a Maryland native, who has closely followed the Capital Gazette shooting. Case in point: The Silver Spring U.S. Coast Guard lieutenant arrested earlier this year while plotting a massive attack was a white nationalist who had MSNBC and CNN media personalities on his hit list. Same for the Florida man arrested for planning bomb attacks this past fall. More recently, there was an assault of a press cameraman at a Trump appearance. It’s a frightening enough combination of events that CNN and other news media outlets now employ security guards to protect reporters covering the president’s rallies.

“Almost everything Trump says about the media Nixon said, but he did so privately,” Stelter says, referring to secret White House recordings later made public through the Watergate hearings. “It’s unlike anything in our lifetimes.”

Out of concern for their security, the Capital Gazette staff moved into a new location after the shooting, which they do not publicly disclose.

Not much is known about the reason for the timing of the shooter’s sudden outburst. His original complaint against the newspaper centered on a 2011 story that covered his criminal harassment of a female former high-school classmate. In 2012, he filed a defamation lawsuit against then-columnist Eric Hartley, Capital Gazette Communications, and the paper’s then-editor and publisher Thomas Marquardt. Prosecutors in the shooting case have been playing their cards close to vest, but it has been reported he visited right-wing conspiracy websites.

McKerrow, the photographer, is frustrated by the dearth of information coming in regarding the shooter’s motives. But he also understands prosecutors want to be able to make their case to an untainted jury. “I’m hesitant to talk about the trial, I think most of us are, although we are certainly following it closely,” he says. “I’m not going to say Donald Trump set him off,” McKerrow adds. “I don’t know what did. But it is interesting that we hadn’t heard anything from him [the suspect] for years and then, all of sudden, he goes off. Do I want to know why? Yes.”

Cook and Ohl, meanwhile, are tasked with covering the trial and then potentially a sentence hearing that would likely include testimony from colleagues and former colleagues’ spouses and adult children. “We’re professionals, we cover trials, and we can set aside our personal interests,” Cook says. “That said, it’s a high-profile trial, and our own memories are still very raw.” As a journalist, he adds that he’s always thought of himself as compassionate and empathetic—“we’re used to talking to people at the worst moments in their lives”—but the experience has changed his perspective. “Until you go through some things, you can’t really understand it.”

If anything, the tragedy has made the survivors more committed to truth-telling journalism. Former Capital Gazette staffers and colleagues from newspapers around the country, including the Los Angeles Times, Allentown Morning Call, Delaware News Journal, Virginian-Pilot, and The Baltimore Sun, returned for three, four, and five days at a clip, and longer, to lend a hand in the weeks and first months following the shooting. Readers expressed their support for their commitment in the best way possible—buying 800 new subscriptions in the days after the tragedy.

The only staffer to leave over the past year is reporter Phil Davis, who essentially took a promotion to The Sun, which is also owned by Tribune Publishing.

Late last summer, a group of 30-plus Capital Gazette staff and local alumni, who have referred to themselves as the Rolling Donut Society since the mid-’80s, gathered to eat crabs at Hutzell’s home in a show of solidarity.

“We took a pause with forming the union for a few months,” Ohl says. “We had to ask ourselves, ‘Is this the right time to do this?’ We had a lot on our plates. More than usual. Although we got help, which was so appreciated, we felt overwhelmed at times, too. In the end, we want to ensure this newspaper remains, these jobs remain, and the work that Rob, John, Wendi, Gerald, and Rebecca did continues. The best way to do that is to fight for livable wages and good benefits and working conditions.”

And today, the job of reporting the news is both more difficult and more meaningful.

McKerrow, who was particularly close to Winters, assumed his friend’s role as the dispenser of the newsroom’s weekly most valuable player award—a cheap, 5-inch newspaper boy in golden trophy form—and $5 gift certificate for coffee.

Late last year, he shot the paper’s annual holiday decorations feature at the Governor’s residence. For years, it was a light yet fun story he did with Winters, his reporting partner, who loved such occasions and always remained awed by the majesty of the day. This past December, his partner was colleague Selene San Felice, who was in the office the day of the attack.

McKerrow tried to hold it together throughout the day, but ended up crying to himself in the Governor’s Mansion. Late that evening, after he got home, he saw Donald Trump had fired off another all-caps tweet: “FAKE NEWS-THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!”

What had provoked the tweet, McKerrow did not know. It appeared to him another random broadside. He responded with a thread, essentially recounting his experience that afternoon and how much he missed his patriotic former colleague Winters, killed by a man trying to silence journalists. It received hundreds of thousdands of responses.

“This has been tough for everybody here,” says McKerrow, sharing that he has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. “This is what I know. You don’t heal from something this like you heal from a broken arm. You carry it with you. You have to adapt and you have learn how to do that. I think most of us are still learning how to do that.”

For those of us who are residents of, working in, or certainly covering the city of Baltimore, there is a dangerous notion of existing in a bubble. Of course, we are well-aware of the city’s exponential violence since the death of Freddie Gray in 2015, but a recent article in The New York Times Magazine that’s been making its rounds on social media forces us to take a step back, seeing the events of the past four years in succession—rather than one at a time.

Of course, little of ProPublica’s Alec MacGillis well-reported findings are exactly news to us. But what he’s done in his recent piece, entitled “The Tragedy of Baltimore,” is put things into clear context, both setting up the framework that led to the events of April 2015 and its devastation aftermath. No matter what you choose to call the Uprising (which, MacGillis points out, reveals “a lot about the politics of the person”), there is an undeniable fact: the events surrounding it have been exponentially more damaging than the thing itself.

This aftermath has been widely reported before in many local outlets, as we reflected one year out, took a close examination into how the Baltimore Police Department is trying to recruit and retain officers, and done consistent reporting on the Gun Trace Task Force. But MacGillis’ synopsis of the past four years chronicles this unraveling in one scrolling, long-form piece that details the city’s mayoral policy changes, string of police commissioners, and unimaginable corruption.

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“It may come up as a surprise for some to see my name on an article that puts the city in such a stark light, given what a notorious booster I’ve been for Baltimore,” MacGillis wrote in a statement. “But I love the city, and I believe that its recovery—which I still think is possible—will require honesty and accountability. The city deserves better than it’s had.”

The story certainly doesn’t wrap up these deep-seated, systemic issues in one neat package or solution, but instead pits two perspectives against each other through the lens of distinct characters. On the one end is Tony Barksdale, former deputy police commissioner in Baltimore, who advocates for tougher police tactics and argues that the consent decree has left officers powerless. Then there is Shantay Guy, whose stepson Da’mon was wounded in a shooting in October, and believes policing in Baltimore is broken and the solutions lie in responding to community needs first.

While there is no definitive right or wrong answer, the perspectives of both Barksdale and Guy reflect conversations being had all over the city, both inside and outside government headquarters. This most recent piece, and the continued dialogue that it will inspire, does implore an important message to its readers, one that is echoed by Erricka Bridgeford in a recent Baltimore Ceasefire slogan: “Don’t be numb.”

There is a notion in the zeitgeist that the media is the enemy of the people, that journalists are hucksters, peddling lies from an ivory tower of deceit. If any of this is true (none of this is true), someone forgot to tell the soon-to-be revived Baltimore Beat.

“We want to serve the community,” said Lisa Snowden-McCray, the once and future editor-in-chief of the Baltimore Beat. “We want to tell stories, but we also want people to know what’s going on and how it affects them.”

On March 6, exactly one year after its initial shuttering, the Beat will relaunch. Founded in 2018 by Snowden-McCray and Brandon Soderberg, both former staff members of City Paper, the Beat functioned as a spiritual successor, of sorts, to the historic alt-weekly, which was shut down the year prior. Although it only lasted four months, the first Beat—the anacrusis, if you will—quickly established itself in the local media scene with its unique perspective.

“Back at City Paper,” said Snowden-McCray, “I remember I went to the opening of a police station that was paid for, in part, by Under Armour. Most of the reporting was just, like, ‘Look at this nice new building,’ but the piece we published in City Paper was ‘Isn’t it kind of weird that Under Armour is paying for a police station?’”

It is this cocktail of serious and unserious that defined the Beat; reviews of marijuana (“Cherry Pie’s high comes fast and strong and stays for hours—also good for reggae listening”) were placed alongside award-winning coverage of the misdoings and corruption of the Baltimore Police Department (“Grave Concerns: Will Detective Suiter’s Death Bring Commissioner Davis Down?”). Even after a year-long hiatus, its ethos will remain the same, focusing on hyper-local issues that larger publications, such as The Baltimore Sun tend to ignore.

“We need to start treating issues that other places don’t see as enough to be a whole major investigative story,” said Soderberg, the Beat’s cofounder, “as if they’re beats that you need to cover. One of our readers told us that he wished someone consistently reported on lead—lead in schools, lead in housing, lead in our communities. There’s no way you could convince a corporate entity to pay someone to report on it consistently; it’s not particularly attractive, but it’s something that’s important and we have the ability and freedom to cover issues like that.”

Beyond the Beat’s irreverent tone and commitment to Baltimore minutiae—“the nuts and bolts,” as Snowden-McCray dubs it—the paper will differ from establishment media in another important way: it will be a digital-only publication. Granted, this is hardly a log gleefully lobbed at print media’s ashen funeral pyre; rather, it is a stark reminder of the financial restriction that the website faces.

In addition to eschewing printing, the Beat will also forego office space and advertising revenue. It will be a nonprofit publication, supported by private donations (its Patreon has 254 backers collectively pledging about $1,200 a month) and the Baltimore Institute for Nonprofit Journalism (BINJ), a foundation that Soderberg helped begin in 2017.

While the decision not to accept advertising money is financially limiting, it’s creatively freeing. Any executive with a baseball-sized windsor knot and a hankering for more listicles and quizzes will kindly be told to get lost.

“As a nonprofit,” said Soderberg, “our metrics aren’t hits or pageviews where people pay to advertise on those pages and expect something in particular. Our metrics are who’s donating and, then, how we can use that money. It gives us flexibility to try new and exciting things.”

In fact, Snowden-McCray and Soderberg will not have to listen to anyone besides themselves—since they’re the only staff members. Eventually, the Beat plans on establishing a deep bullpen of freelancers who, together, can capture the totality of the city, from the arts to the city council.

“I contributed to a piece in the Columbia Journalism Review,” said Snowden-McCray,“and they were looking at the number of people of color in newsrooms and the numbers are still very bad. I really want to be intentional about reimagining how we find writers, how we get talent. I want to be intentional about who we hire.”

And yet, there’s no guarantee that any of this can or will last. Media outlets at all levels—especially on the local one—are struggling to turn a profit; the industry on the whole has shrunk 23 percent since 2008. The Beat hopes to be an antidote to this trend, delivering old-school beat reporting via a unique financial structure.

“These structures that we’ve had in place for decades just aren’t working anymore,” Snowden-McCray said about the state of journalism, but, really, the world at large. “It feels more important to try than to be scared.”

This year, like every year, there was rampant speculation about the unveiling of Time magazine’s Person of the Year. Will it be Donald Trump? Robert Mueller? Dr. Christine Blasey Ford? Instead, in a surprising and moving gesture—a clear repudiation of Trump’s war on the press—the magazine chose “The Guardians of the Truth.”

Among them were slain Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi; Filipino journalist Maria Resser, whose online new site Rappler exposes human rights violations in her country; and two Reuters journalists, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, who were framed and falsely imprisoned in Myanmar.

But locally, the inclusion of the staff of the Capital Gazette stirred powerful memories and emotions. The picture of the surviving staff and family is inspiring. In black and white they stand, unsmiling, arms locked, resolute. Andrea Chamblee, wife of the late John McNamara wears a T-shirt that reads “Journalism Matters.” Reporter Katherine’s shirt is emblazoned with the now famous words of her colleague Chase Cook: “I can tell you this. We are putting out a damn paper tomorrow.”

The article includes a video where reporter Selene San Felice says, “Someone wanted to silence us. We will not be silenced.” On Twitter, reaction was swift and emotional.

This Time magazine interview, which took place on December 9 in Washington, D.C., was the first sit-down interview that Capital editor Rick Hutzell agreed to do since the June 28 shooting. “I’m here today because members of my staff wanted to come down and participate,” he explained to Time. “Journalists have never been held in high regard—nobody like Thomas Paine. I think at this moment in history, where words of violence are so easy to throw out there, it’s a little scarier.”

Paul Jay thinks we are far past the time for journalistic niceties. The CEO and senior editor of the Baltimore-based nonprofit journalism outlet The Real News Network (TRNN) minces no words as he speaks from his spacious downtown office. “How broad do you want to be on the truth?” he asks. “Do you want to narrow the truth, so it’s so limited and you don’t tell people the big picture and what the threats are?”

He’s talking about an innovative style of news-making that seeks to bypass corporate journalism and advertisers, making media that is more accessible to broad populations. And his offices look like the kind of place where innovative work is being done. The renovated warehouse space is all exposed brick and steel beams. Some staff members work out in the open, at several long, wooden tables. Others have glass-walled offices. Windows let in plenty of natural light, as well as views from the bustling city below (TRNN is within walking distance from City Hall).

The space includes three studios for creating videos, one of which is also equipped for podcasting. Modern soul food restaurant Ida B’s Table is on the first floor, and there are work spaces available for rent. Outside is a marquee that posts weekly messages about the latest in local news—sometimes bitingly direct, and sometimes tongue-in-cheek.

“Pugh wants ethics exemption. LOL,” read the marquee in May when Mayor Catherine Pugh requested a sweeping exemption from city ethics rules. One day in September there were seven murders in 24 hours, and the block-letter text simply read: “7 murders in 24 hours. What’s next for Baltimore?”

Jay says he likes to cut through the noise. On the day of our interview, for example, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had just issued a calamitous new report, which makes the case that the world had just 12 years to stave off the most detrimental effects of climate change.

“Either you believe in science, or you don’t,” Jay says. “I’m not a climate scientist, but the leading climate scientists are saying this. So why don’t we say that? What’s wrong is most of what’s calling itself journalism isn’t journalism. It’s either the narrowest reporting without any real historical social, economic, context. Or it’s like what’s going on with CNN, MSNBC, or FOX, in which they just chase ratings. They don’t give a damn about the actual truth of the situation.”

“If we are going to do local news in Baltimore, we’d better look like Baltimore.”

Founded in Toronto in 2003, The Real News expanded and made Baltimore the headquarters 10 years later. The company employs more than 30 people, who work as editors, camera operators, managers, journalists, and office managers. TRNN is a nonprofit—they don’t accept advertising and are supported by donations, and by the organization’s separate, for-profit business entities.

“There would be no problem if we had a budget even a fraction of The Baltimore Sun,” Jay says. “Our whole budget is around $3.3 million.”

They have large and small donors, and they also have a for-profit segment that helps keep the lights on, too. TRNN purchased their building using donated funds ,and they rent out space. TRNN is also the primary investor in Ida B’s Table, so they get funding from that, although vice president of finance and operations Leandro Lagera is quick to point out that the primary goal of Ida B’s is not to make money, but to foster community.

Jay says that he and his team knew they wanted to expand operations beyond Canada and into the United States as early as 2008. In 2009, they opened a small office in Washington, D.C., a few blocks from the White House. Then they decided that D.C. wasn’t the place for them.

“After a couple of years, we really started to understand that if we want to speak to ordinary working people, we needed to be in a city and learn how to do local news,” Jay says. “For most people, news and politics are local.”

He and his team settled in Charm City, partly because they’d gotten to know about it through their time in D.C. They also elicited the help of veteran journalist Marc Steiner, who, after leaving Morgan State University’s WEAA-FM radio station, produces his eponymous show through TRNN.

After that came the work of creating a newsroom that looked like the city.

“We made a determination when we came here that if we’re going to do local news in Baltimore, we’d better look like Baltimore,” he says.

One of TRNN’s more recent hires is education expert and attorney Khalilah Harris, as host and executive producer. A black woman from Brooklyn, New York, who has lived in Baltimore since she came to attend Morgan State University 24 years ago, Harris has worked for social justice around education for several decades, but never in front of the camera as a television host. Among other things, she served as deputy director of the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for African Americans under the Obama administration.

Harris says she is there to not only bring her knowledge of policy, law, and education to the table, but also her perspective as a black woman.

“How do we serve as good stewards of helping people find solutions for themselves or bring to the surface the solutions that already exist locally in Baltimore?” she says. “Baltimore is really a microcosm of all national issues and also in a location that could prove to provide solutions to those things.”

Jay oversees the management of the outlet with the help of his wife, Sharmini Peries, a journalist and former economic and trade adviser to ex-Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, and author and former Black Panther Eddie Conway.

The newsroom is considered far left by mainstream standards, and its goal, in essence, is to skirt the extraneous elements that come with traditional journalism (no ratings to chase, no advertisers to satisfy), and reach out directly to the people—specifically Baltimore’s black working class. TRNN does this with stories that can be read on their website, streamed on YouTube, or watched on television through Baltimore’s public access channel and Comcast On-Demand.

“We want to become the mainstream media for Baltimore,” Jay told a City Paper reporter in a 2014 story about the network’s beginnings.

Now, after a 40-year run, City Paper is gone, and nationally, many other outlets have shuttered as well. There is no other large-scale alternative outlet to serve the city. Suddenly, TRNN is poised to play an even bigger role in the city’s journalistic ecosystem.

The fact is that Baltimore is a decidedly black, working-class city (according to the 2010 Census, 63 percent of the city’s population of over 610,000 is black), but most of the people telling the city’s stories are white. TRNN’s reporters and producing team, however, skews far browner, mostly Baltimore born and bred, and much more working class in terms of their background and world view.

TRNN offers updates on national and international news (you can find news from Africa, South Asia, and the Caribbean among the network’s offerings), but Baltimore takes center stage. You’ll find news related to the city in its own highlighted yellow section on TRNN’s website. Reporters have covered topics such as labor issues at Johns Hopkins and the toll climate change takes on poor communities and have interviewed local third-party politicians. In their series “Hidden Victims,” reporters Taya Graham and Stephen Janis tackle the ways that black women in Baltimore can be victims of police violence.

Jay says that he’d like to see the network bring more black women aboard.

“I’m more experienced, but I’m white, and it’s harder for me to be heard in this city,” Jay says. “It’s black working women who will decide the fate of this city, and so we need to be better at finding women, black women, who can do this kind of journalism.”

“There are not as many reporters holding politicians, institutions, and the powerful accountable.”

In 2014, shortly after being released from prison—he served more than 40 years stemming from the 1970 murder of a Baltimore City Police officer—Conway came to The Real News.

Conway, who has always maintained his innocence, was already an established name in the activist and prison abolitionist community and was working in Baltimore’s Gilmor Homes. He said people he knew kept coming to him and telling him the journalists at TRNN wanted to interview him. Finally, he acquiesced. TRNN had a number of black activist groups as tenants, and Conway liked that. He also liked the idea of widening the number of people who could learn about the causes he cared about.

“I said, ‘Look, I like what y’all are doing because even though I’m down there and I’m reaching 100, 200 people—what you’re doing is you’re reaching potentially millions of people,’” he says.

Conway, who was trained in journalism by famed writer and columnist Tom Wicker while he was in prison, reports and also produces a show called Rattling the Bars, about issues around life in and out of prison. But working at TRNN is a little different for him. Conway admits that he brings a very distinct point of view—and even an activist’s sensibility—to his journalism, but he thinks there’s room for that.

“There is no such thing as objective reporting,” he says. “Everything you do comes from your paradigm. And if your paradigm is one of conscience-raising and activism, then your journalism will reflect that.”

However, he says he does not cover or have anything to do with stories TRNN produces about any activist causes he is directly involved in.

Reporter and show host Eze Jackson is another TRNN hire who comes from an activist background. After serving in the Navy, Jackson found work at Service Employees International Union, where he stayed for 10 years. He was also president of Marylanders for Marriage Equality in 2012, just before Maryland legally recognized same-sex unions.

Like Conway, he has learned to walk the line between his personal convictions and his journalistic integrity. He’s learned on the job from veteran reporters like Stephen Janis and former TRNN editorial director and City Paper editor Baynard Woods.

“I just decided to try it,” Jackson says of reporting. “I kind of naturally grabbed onto it because I was like, ‘Oh, this is not very different from making music, making songs, or creating a music video.’”

While some of this is old hat for TRNN, more journalists are looking to the nonprofit model to investigate and report meaningful stories.

“As traditional legacy news organizations in many places get smaller, these nonprofit news organizations are filling a void and doing important work for democracy,” says former Sun associate managing editor and current University of Maryland visiting scholar Marty Kaiser.

Kaiser sits on the board of the nonprofit Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism and has helped lead other nonprofit outlets around the country. “There are not as many reporters holding institutions, politicians, and the powerful accountable,” he says. “That’s where many of these nonprofit news organizations can make a difference.”

If it sounds like a daunting responsibility, it is. TRNN journalists wear many hats to get stories covered.

“We all have general beats but we’re a small team, so we tend to focus on multiple things,” says managing editor of the Baltimore Bureau Dharna Noor. She says it’s basically like having multiple plates spinning at one time. “I cover climate stuff and environmental racism, but sometimes I also report on labor because we don’t have a labor reporter.”

Noor also writes her own scripts, helps write and edit other people’s scripts, and helps out at various TRNN events.

“Our difficulty is money more than anything,” Jay says. But he thinks that as TRNN continues to hone its mission, those donations will come. “Part of it is we have to be better storytellers. We have to be better at taking specific things that happen, report on them, but then give them this kind of context, this kind of analysis, this kind of meat on the bones.”

Three Maryland newspaper groups have decided to take the fate of local journalism into their own hands.

Yesterday, the Capital Gazette, and Carroll County Times, and Baltimore Sun Media Group released a statement saying they are banding together in hopes to form the Chesapeake News Guild. In the process, they are asking that Tribune, their parent company, recognize the guild as a unit of the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild (WBNG), giving employees proper union compensation, benefits, and working conditions.

“Local journalism is unique,” the statement reads. “Whether the sun shines or disaster strikes, we are right there with you. As local news outlets dwindle, we know now more than ever that quality community news is a gift too precious to lose. But that important work grows more difficult each day because of decisions made by distant corporate owners on behalf of shareholders. Decisions that have led to smaller newsrooms, stagnant wages, and limited resources.”

The newly formed guild covers a large swath of Central Maryland including Baltimore City and County, Harford County, Howard County, Carroll County, and Anne Arundel County—in total reaching an audience of two million people.

“After years of our company underinvesting in our newsrooms, we are tired,” the statement continues, “We are tired of bearing a workload that requires a newsroom four times the size. We are tired of not receiving reasonable cost of living raises, despite the fact we bear the additional responsibilities of our former co-workers. We are tired of having staffs too small to cover all the stories our readers care about.”

The members of the Chesapeake News Guild is asking its parent company to recognize them as a member of WBNG, which traces its roots back to 1934, when the local union was organized during the Great Depression to improve the economic conditions of Washington-area journalists.

This moves come at a time when many other newsrooms around the country are forming similar unions to earn better pay and benefits. After a series of management shake-ups, the Los Angeles Times made a historic move in its newsroom when its staff voted 248-44 to unionize in January.

“The situation in the [journalism] industry is very dire,” Sally Davidow, communications director at the NewsGuild-CWA, told Editor & Publisher. “People feel they can’t earn a decent living and they have no control over their work schedules.”

Many local journalists acknowledge that as the suburban bureaus of The Baltimore Sun have weakened, these non-unionized newspapers have picked up the slack, but have not yet received the same benefits.

“The Baltimore Sun, whose roots as a union shop date to 1934, once competed against these community papers,” wrote The Sun’s union chair Scott Dance. “But its suburban bureaus have disappeared as it instead leans on these papers, which it purchased in 1997 and 2014, for hyperlocal coverage. The Sun’s Guild employees stand in solidarity with these colleagues—it is long past time for them to earn the same rights and benefits Sun staff have defended for decades.”

Five people were fatally shot and two others were injured at the Annapolis offices of the Capital Gazette Thursday afternoon. Jarrod Ramos, a 38-year-old Laurel man, who had long carried a resentment for the publication, was charged with five counts of first-degree murder.

Many journalists in the state are reeling with the loss of colleagues and the attack on their industry as a whole.

“I just read the news with tears in my eyes because these people are family,” said Adrianne Flynn, career development director and ethics professor at University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism. “We instill in our students that in times of tragedy, it’s a journalist’s duty to tell the public what is happening. We buckle up and mourn later.”

That was exactly the response of Capital reporters, who, within hours of gunfire in their newsroom, released the Friday edition of the paper. The opinion section stated “Today we are speechless” and was dedicated to the five victims who lost their lives: Rob Hiaasen, Wendi Winters, Gerald Fischman, Rebecca Smith,­ and John McNamara.

“I worked with Rob and I knew John for 37 years,” said Milton Kent, a lecturer at Morgan State University, former Baltimore Sun reporter, and head of the MSU Spokesman. “We all, even in our worst moments, have to put aside whatever there is and get the job done. I can speak for John and Rob, they wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.”

Several regional reporters have weighed in on the tragedy and how it speaks to the journalism landscape as a whole. Maryland Matters editor Josh Kurtz wrote a poignant essay about hearing the news while standing in the Newseum in Washington, D.C.

“There’s a towering artifact dedicated to journalists who have been killed in the line of duty,” he says about the museum. “But usually you’re a foreign correspondent covering a war, not sitting at your desk. Journalism is a noble profession and it always will be.”

The Capital Gazette, which incredibly traces its origins back to 1727, has been owned by the Baltimore Sun Media Group since May 2014. Many Sun reporters assisted with getting the paper out today. University of Maryland’s Capital News Service has offered its newsroom up to Capital employees.

“We have sent so many kids to work there,” says Flynn, who has been at University of Maryland since 1999. “Rob has been an adjunct here for the past year and always said he wanted to help young journalists. He wanted to instill good values.”

In July 2011, columnist Eric Hartley wrote a story about a criminal harassment case against Ramos, who then brought a defamation case against Hartley and the Capital publisher at the time Thomas Marquardt. The court ruled in favor of the newspaper.

“The randomness of it is so shocking,” Kent said. “This guy had a beef and a gun. I’m starting to call these American days. Because this is uniquely American. There has been a mass shooting almost every day this year. No other civilized country on the planet lives this way.”

The 154th mass shooting this year comes at a time when the political landscape centers around a particular vitriol against journalism. As recently as June 18, President Trump tweeted that the media is “the enemy of the people” and “truth doesn’t matter to them.”

“As far back as ancient times, it’s been about ‘don’t shoot the messenger’ and that holds today even more powerfully,” Flynn said. “The climate in the country right now is so anti-information. Our community is under attack.”

More than 30 years ago, veteran journalist McKay Jenkins got his start in the Capital Gazette newsroom. He considered McNamara a “close personal friend.”

“What makes the newsroom shooting so unsettling is the grotesque fact that we live at a time when political voices in our country are openly calling for repression, harassment, and even outright violence against journalists,” Jenkins said in an email. “Strong, unfettered journalism is a fundamental structure undergirding the very possibility of democracy.”

The shooting feels reminiscent of the January 2015 terrorist attack on satirical weekly magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris. As a small staff of about 20, the Capital Gazette lost a quarter of its newsroom to the violence yesterday.

Bloomberg government reporter, Madi Alexander, started a GoFundMe campaign for the journalists and it has already reached nearly $120,000. Gov. Larry Hogan ordered that the flag above the State House be flown at half-staff and two vigils are planned for Friday night in Annapolis.

“A fool doesn’t seek out danger, but in the course of our lives as journalists you can’t live your life in those terms,” Kent says. “The challenge for the staff moving forward is to do justice by the people who were killed. In the end, it’s going to be really hard, but they are professionals.”

Additional reporting was provided by senior editor Lydia Woolever.

By the time this issue hits stands and goes online, you’ll be retired from WBAL-TV. After 22 years at the station, how are you feeling about the transition into retirement?
It will be a big change for me, and I haven’t worked out exactly how that’s going to be or what I’ll be doing next. I know I’m going to be putting together a lifestyle website about travel, decor, and food. I wanted more time to do what I want to do, which is travel and spend time with my grandchildren. It will be something different, but everyone tells me I’m going to love it, and I intend to do so! 

How did you get into broadcast journalism?
I got my start on television in Birmingham, Alabama, which is where I grew up and went to school. I had done some modeling, and there was a live morning talk show that had an opening for a co-host/on-air sidekick position. I auditioned for the position and didn’t get it, but I started working at the station and filling in for the co-host when she was on vacation. When she left the station—I was in my late 20s at the time—I got the job and that’s how I fell into broadcast. 

You joined the WBAL-TV news team in 1995. What was that first year like?
Honestly, the first year was pretty terrifying for me because I had never done that type of daily coverage before. The reports had to be short and quick, almost shrink-wrapped. . . . The 5 p.m. show is always the newscast that takes the brunt of anything that’s going on during the day, changewise, so it was always like riding a bucking bronco and it still can be today. Sometimes it’s very tame, it’s just a newscast, no big deal. But then something will happen and all hell will break loose. 

Once you got past the terrified phase, did you see news anchoring as something you wanted to continue for the rest of your career?
I don’t know that I did. See, I know everyone seems to think that there’s going to be a light that dawns on yonder rock and you suddenly have this clear idea of what you want to do with your life, but that light never really dawned for me. I happened to be good at what I did, by the grace of God, and it propelled me forward in my career. It wasn’t that I ever had this gigantic plan to do this or that. Things just found me and I kept doing them well. 

That’s interesting because I feel like younger generations have the notion that you have to have your career planned out years in advance.
Exactly. Everyone is asking themselves, what do I want to do with my life? I think that’s the hardest thing to do. There’s too much pressure. Wait, how old are you?

I’m 22.
Oh my god! Well when you’re 22, I can only imagine how life yawns before you in this series of big question marks. What am I supposed to be doing? What am I good at? Should I have some five- or ten-year plan? I wish I could tell people those answers from this part of my life, but I don’t have any. I think most people find something that they’re pretty good at and run on that stream.

Can you relate to that feeling with your career?
Television just worked for me. I liked that it was something different everyday and I wasn’t stuck in a cubicle. It was sometimes exciting, sometimes boring, sometimes terrifying, but it was always something I could do and so I did it. I like the performance aspect of doing the broadcasts because you know when you nail a read. And then, other times, not so much.

And if the newscast doesn’t go well, you get to try it again during the next show.
Yes! That’s what I like about news—Nothing hangs over from day to day. You finish the newscast, and it may have been really good or it may have been a total disaster, but either way it’s over. There’s always another chance to do a perfect show, which will never happen of course, but every single show is a fresh slate. 

Over the past few years, local television news viewership has declined as more people get their information through other mediums such as the internet and social media. What do you think local news will look like in 10 years?
Well, part of the problem is that no one really knows where TV news is headed. There are a lot of people who believe that its heydey is over, which is probably true. I don’t think younger people are watching TV news; they get their news in other ways, and that will continue to be a challenge. But local news does have a particular product to offer that no one else does. If you want to know what’s going on in your own city or state, then you’ll probably have to watch a local newscast, because national affiliates are only going to cover our news if something huge happens . . . I think all TV newscasts, whether it’s local or national, face the same kinds of issues. The big question is: How are people going to get their news in the future? I just don’t know. 

As a news anchor, how did you combat the public’s growing distrust of the media?
We just keep on doing real news. I don’t know how you combat the thought that people create fake news, because I genuinely and truly believe that most people in this business really strive to do their best work and put the most honest, unbiased story out there that they can. That’s why I think this whole fake news business is fake. It’s fake itself, and it’s sad that it throws doubt in people’s minds. It’s dangerous—the press is the force that stands between the American public and people who would like to do things under the cover of darkness. Without the press, how would you know what people in high places are doing? You wouldn’t. 

What was your reaction to the Sinclair Broadcasting controversy, where the media company faced scrutiny for forcing its news anchors to record a promotional message about “the troubling trend of irresponsible, one sided news stories plaguing our country”?
I was horrified for the people who had to do it. . . . I think that was a really bad position to be put in and I felt for them. In reality, that’s a very difficult decision to make as an anchor. You might have a family to raise and bills to pay, and now your job is potentially hanging over this decision. It’s very easy to say you wouldn’t do it, but that’s very difficult to do. What would I have done? I honestly don’t know. I like to think I would not have done it but I don’t know. 

One last thing: You requested to appear in this feature without makeup or retouching. What motivated that decision?
When I think about all the thousands of newscasts, photoshoots, and appearances, I’ve done over the course of my career, of which makeup has always been a key part, I just thought, wouldn’t [the photo] be more interesting without it? . . . I suppose I’ve been in the business my whole life full of artifice and I wouldn’t mind being the under-the-artifice me. I may live to regret that dreadfully. 

You moved to The Sun after it was announced they were closing the City Paper. Then you jumped back into the alt-weekly world with the Beat?
Brandon Soderberg (former City Paper editor and new Beat managing editor) hustled for months to find a purchaser for the City Paper or start something similar. When he finally found one, he said he wanted to turn it over to me. I didn’t jump. I had to think about it. The Sun was a stable job, I liked my co-workers—who do an amazing job—but we need more outlets in the city. It’s a gamble, but journalism is a gamble everywhere these days. 

You’ve said the Beat will not be City Paper 2.0.
There was really nothing wrong with the City Paper. Other than the behind-the-scenes business decisions. People still loved the product. What is a priority to me, is to keep pushing to get new voices into the paper, and give people a platform for stories that aren’t being told anywhere else. 

Ultimately, Baltimore resident Kevin Naff and Brown Naff Pitts Omnimedia, which publishes the Washington Blade, the oldest LGBT newspaper in the country, stepped up as publisher.
The Blade runs like clockwork. The fact that Kevin believes we can make money—he wouldn’t invest his money otherwise—is important. The Blade, in D.C., got ad calls the first day the launch of the Beat was announced. We’ll share resources—printing, circulation, sales, marketing—as well as some edit and photography coverage. The Blade has been breaking LGBT stories in Baltimore for years. 

You’re starting with a full-time edit team of three—City Paper had 10. That’s tough.
It’s daunting, but not new. Ever since I’ve been a journalist, we’ve had to learn how to do more with the less. Brandon [Soderberg], arts and culture editor/deputy Maura Callahan, and myself will be doing a lot of writing, initially. [Former City Paper editor] Baynard Woods and the Real News Network, whose downtown building we use, will contribute. We also have a small freelance budget.

What about your online presence?
We will put everything on our website Tuesday night before the print issue comes out. And we’re planning to partner with some local podcasts and Dr. Kaye Whitehead [Loyola University professor of communications and African-American studies], who has a daily show working with WEAA. We will try a lot of different things. The way I operate is that I try to steal from everybody, figure it out, and make it my own. 

Where do you see the Beat fitting in the city’s news landscape?
We can’t compete with The Sun in breaking daily news. But I think there are a lot of smaller places such as the Baltimore Brew, the Afro, Baltimore magazine—though not small as those others—that make up the journalism ecology in the city. I think there is room for us in that ecology. The fact that we are getting press releases and story pitches already shows me there is space for us. 

What City Paper items are migrating to the Beat, in terms of content? You mentioned Baynard Woods—I’m assuming you were referencing his “Democracy in Crisis” column?
Yes. His column. Also [UMBC professor] Kate Drabinski’s “Field Tripping” column. We won’t have the “Power Rankings,” but something similar. Baynard and Brandon will continue to do weed reviews. Our arts and events calendar was really important to readers and Maura will continue to produce a comprehensive, diverse music and arts calendar, but it will be more curated. We intend to do long-form, investigative cover stories. I wish we could bring [former City Paper photo editor] Joe Giordano over to the Beat, but we can’t afford a full-time photo editor to start.

Where can we find the Beat? The Sun has repurposed the old City Paper news boxes for its new weekend entertainment paper.
I do want to say that we feel it is important to have a print issue because not everyone in this city has a smartphone with an unlimited data plan or regular WiFi access. And we do want to push into parts of West and East Baltimore that traditionally have been left out in the past. Boxes are very expensive, so you can find us in small businesses, convenience stores, libraries, gyms—anywhere else they’ll let us [distribute], basically—across the city. 

Stephen A. Geppi, publisher and CEO of Baltimore magazine, announced today that Michael Teitelbaum has been named its president effective August 28. He succeeds Richard M. Basoco, who has been leading the organization since 1997 and is retiring at the end of the year. 

“We welcome Michael, and will benefit from his experience, skill-set, and passion,” said Geppi.

“His knowledge of marketing, media, digital
publishing, and content marketing will help us more fully integrate our award-winning print and online publications and events
to better serve our audiences and advertisers.”

This is not Teitelbaum’s first time working at the magazine. A Baltimore native who graduated from the University of Maryland
in 1979, his second job out of college was as account executive with Baltimore magazine.

Since that time, his entrepreneurial spirit has led him to own and manage a variety of media, marketing, and advertising companies. A pioneer in digital marketing, Teitelbaum co-founded one of the area’s first web development companies
back in 1995. Since then, he has been at the forefront of digital media and marketing. For the past six years, he has been a
managing partner at Right Source Marketing.

Teitelbaum said he is excited to join a staff of dedicated employees and to grow the company’s presence in the marketplace.
“There is a lot of talent at Baltimore magazine and I am excited to get to know everyone personally,” he says. “There are huge opportunities
to expand on a foundation 110 years in the making.”

On a personal level, Teitelbaum lives in Baltimore City with his wife, Sandy, and has three sons—Matt, Josh, and Sam. He enjoys being with his family, playing bass in his band The Wafflers, golfing, and doing yoga. For the past four years, he has been the board chair for the Baltimore chapter of NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness).

Basoco has been recognized as one of the leading journalists and print media executives in the region for many years. Prior to his 20 years at Baltimore magazine, he was with The Baltimore Sun where he served in a variety of management and editorial positions before becoming a senior vice president with the publication.

“The organization is in good hands,” he says. “It has been
a privilege to work with so many fine colleagues over the years, and I look forward to helping with a smooth transition.”

You’ve been at the epicenter of all the political news in Washington since President Donald Trump’s election. What has that been like for you?
It’s a lot. The uptick is extreme, and we’ve never had an uptick like this before. I’ve been in the middle of watching politics for 20 years in Washington, but this is definitely different. We’re bombarded with everything now. Typically, during the course of the day, there would be two to three stories that would circulate, but now it’s everywhere, everything, all day, all night, and on weekends. And Twitter is now more relevant than ever before. I was talking to a friend who actually has an audio alert for when the president posts something. As I’m talking to you, that reminds me that I need to do that.

As someone who’s covering the news, what do you make of this change?
The way we used to cover news is no more. I grew up in the era of Walter Cronkite where you didn’t know the journalists’ political persuasions. You trusted them. There was no social media; we didn’t have to think about Twitter, or the internet. I remember in college they told us, “Be ready for the information superhighway,” and now it’s here. They should have told us not just to be ready, but beware.

It’s extreme, and there’s a hunger now for immediacy, be it news, or responses from people. And that has caused the news cycle—the news machine—to go into overdrive. This is the first time in history where a newsmaker, a high-profile person, can talk directly to their constituency, their fan base, without going through the filter of the media. We used to be the ones who would ask the questions that we heard from the groundswell of Capitol Hill. And now, you don’t have to read the story because you can watch it happening.

Trump seems to have taken it to another level. You could argue that Barack Obama had access to the same type of technology.
But the issue is we didn’t see him tweeting everything. He didn’t watch a TV show and tweet about it, or tweet something that would throw firebombs everywhere and people were scrambling to determine if it was real, if it happened, what does it mean. He wasn’t a president who would be his own press secretary. Now, you have the day’s activities set, then all Trump has to do is send out a tweet and the whole day has changed. And these are big news pieces, so then the question becomes, what do you as a journalist focus on? It’s tough.

It also seems like there has to be scrutiny of what the White House is saying.
This president doesn’t believe in being politically correct. He goes from the gut, and what he thinks comes out. And this is what some people love about him—the realness of him. He is one of the people, but there’s a flip side, too, because your words can change markets. It can cause anxiety from other world leaders. Words mean something.

You’ve been in the news yourself lately, whether that was when Trump asked you to set up a meeting with black lawmakers, or reality TV star Omarosa Manigault claimed you were being paid by Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Obviously that’s not something that normally happens with journalists covering the White House. What has that been like for you?
[Laughs] It’s been rough. I choose not to talk about the particular situation that happened between me and Omarosa, but what I will tell you is there were plenty of people who saw it. Yes, we had been friends for 20 years. Yes, during the summer she had asked me to be in her wedding, but yes, also in October, she started sending me these crazy emails saying things that were not true. It’s about my career, my journalistic integrity, that I’ve built for 20 years. And I’m not going to lose that for someone who comes back to Washington who’s trying to smear the media. This is all part of a campaign, but for a friend to do this to a friend? That’s a problem. You don’t want them asking questions? You don’t want them being a part of the White House press corps? The press is a part of the framework of this country. We were built into the Constitution by our founding fathers. It makes no sense to me.

Nationally, it seems like respect for journalism is on the rise, with readership at The New York Times and The Washington Post increasing. Still, it must be difficult to continue working with what appears to be an increasingly hostile White House.
I do the job that I’ve been doing. I talk to my sources and newsmakers, people from other presidential administrations, Democrats and Republicans. It’s the same job, we’re just under attack. Why? I’m still trying to figure that one out. There’s anxiety, but you know what, I still have a job to do. My company is 1,000 percent behind me, flatfooted. It means a lot to have that support.

I wanted to talk about your book, At Mama’s Knee, which looks at race relations through the lessons that mothers teach their children. How did it come to be?
Since I was a kid, there was something in my spirit about writing a book, but that didn’t come back into my mind until I started working at the White House. A friend of mine who really inspires me and he’s been a mentor to me—his name is Norman Hall and he works at The Associated Press—said to me once, “You cannot sit next to the seat of power and not write a book. You see things and experience things other people will never experience.” And he was right. So I started writing my first book, The Presidency in Black and White, and it took about 17 years to write.

History hit me hard personally, not just at the White House, because I had to talk to my children about race. They attend a predominantly white, wealthy school where people don’t normally have to talk about it. But that school, along with other schools in the area, closed early because of what happened after the funeral of Freddie Gray in 2015, and I had to talk to them. I can’t just talk to presidents of the United States or newsmakers and leaders around the world about issues of race. I would be remiss if I had not talked to my children and told them why they were being dismissed from school early and why this was happening. It really started one day when I was at work and my baby daughter called me and said, ‘Mommy, is it true that a kid got killed because he was playing with a gun?’ And the reason she called was because my aunt told her to bring her toy Nerf gun in the house because she did not want it to be misconstrued as a real gun because of what happened [to Tamir Rice in Cleveland in 2014.] My 6-year-old’s mind did not understand the dynamics, and I had to explain to her that this was very real. She was nervous, she was scared, and she didn’t believe me. I had to show her the video, walk it through with her. But I also had to tell her that at the end of the day, there was hope.

The day of Freddie Gray’s funeral, I was watching what happened in the White House. I was screaming, ‘That’s Mondawmin Mall, that’s Monroe Street!’ These were the haunts I used to go to as a kid—I remember going to piano practice on Tioga Parkway, next to Mondawmin Mall. This is my town. My family kept telling me, ‘Get home, get home, get the girls.’ So I drove home, with tears in my eyes. I was so scared that night. The next day, I decided not to go to work, and sure enough, school was let out early again. So we drove up the street to the local grocery store and I tried to keep it light, set a tone that we were going to be ok. Then I saw this Confederate flag on the back of a pick-up truck, brandishing around in the wind as the truck was driving around this maze of a parking lot. I looked out the window at these other women who were by the store, and I said, ‘Is that what I think it is?’ My oldest daughter did not know what it was, so I had to tell her, and she started to cry. I tried to get a picture of this person and the license plate and I called the police. By waving that flag, they were adding fuel to a fire. I believe in freedom of expression, but this was not the time. Wisdom was needed. And I was very fearful that something could erupt. I still have pictures of it in my phone.

How have things changed for you and your family since Freddie Gray’s death?
My kids are more aware now. I love the way my oldest approaches it. She has friends from every walk of life, but when there are questions from other communities, she breaks it down in a non-threatening but informative way, as a 14-year-old. I’ve had teachers from her school call me and tell me how they’re so happy at how she is able to talk to kids from other communities who don’t understand. It makes me feel great that my kids understand that we live in the world that we live in, but that there’s still hope. They have Jewish friends, Asian friends, white friends, black friends. And I love the fact that they are able to come together and say, ‘Hey we’re different but we celebrate each other.’ That’s the world that I hope for. That’s the United States that I’m desperately hoping for.

Did you ever consider leaving Baltimore, especially since your work is in D.C.?
I did. But my family and my friends are here. Baltimore’s a real town. I love Baltimore. I’ve been here pretty much my whole life. . . . We have a lot of hurts in Baltimore, but we also have a lot of greatness. And there will be a time, I believe, that Baltimore will have its renaissance. Yeah, we’ve got Band-Aids on some of the ugly things, but we are rising. And that’s one of the reasons why I won’t leave. 

Do you see any other books in your future?
Yes. [Laughs] It won’t be a surprise when it comes out, but it will be a page-turner, that’s all I’m going to say.

The Boys of Dunbar

Alejandro Danois (Simon & Schuster)

The 1981-82 Dunbar High School Poets hold a remarkable achievement—four of the legendary basketball team’s stars went on to the NBA. Teammates including Reggie Williams and Muggsy Bogues displayed resilience and drive, along with undeniable talent, as they were from some of Baltimore’s poorest neighborhoods. Danois, who is editor-in-chief of the sports website The Shadow League, struggles with a consistent narrative, but does an excellent job bringing us behind the scenes with fabulous insight from the Poets themselves and their coach Bob Wade. Ultimately, they show us what true strength and gumption look like.

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The Life of Kings

Edited by Frederic B. Hill and Stephens Broening (Rowman & Littlefield)

The Baltimore Sun has weathered much during its nearly 180-year history—including its 1986 sale to the Times Mirror company, and the shuttering of The Evening Sun in 1995. Through good times and bad, it produced excellent journalism, and this collection of personal essays takes us back to some of those times. Read how TV producer David Simon still can’t forget phone numbers he called on the night cops shift, or how Jerelyn Eddings became the Johannesburg bureau chief just as Nelson Mandela was freed from prison. This collection reminds us of the importance of journalism, whether it’s to keep watch, make us laugh, or remind us of where we come from.

John S. Carroll, who was the editor of The Baltimore Sun for 10 years, passed away at his home in Lexington, KY, on Sunday from a rare neurological disorder, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. He was 73.

Carroll is also credited with restoring the reputation at the Los Angeles Times, where he worked after his position in Baltimore, even helping to earn the paper 13 Pulitzer Prizes in his five year tenure (including five in 2004).

“He was a remarkable person, as well as an exceptional journalist,” says newspaper veteran Fred Hill, who came up with Carroll as a young reporter at The Sun. “He had the highest integrity, status, and determination to excel and report news as clearly and concisely as possible.”

The two colleagues became friends during Carroll’s first stint as a reporter at The Sun in 1966—when they both shared a bachelor pad in Roland Park. Carroll stayed in Baltimore until the paper sent him to cover Vietnam. After a storied career that took him to The Philadelphia Inquirer and the Lexington Herald-Leader, he then returned to The Sun as its editor in 1991, where he stayed until 2000. During that period, he helped the paper earned a Pulitzer for a series on the environmental dangers posed by dismantling ships in the Inner Harbor.

Hill, with co-editor Steve Broening, is editing a book on The Sun, to be published by Rowman Littlefield next year. The book, which Hill was planning on having Carroll contribute to, will be a series of essays about the period at the newspaper between the 1960s and the mid-1990s, when The Sun was considered one of the best papers in the country. Hill says now he will likely use an excerpt from one of Carroll’s articles instead.

“He was a remarkable journalist, extraordinary leader, and extremely dedicated to public service,” Hill says. “It’s a tragedy that he’s gone.”

Besides his groundbreaking work, Carroll’s legacy also includes his contributions as a founding board member of the News Literacy Project, whose mission is to educate students in middle school and high school about journalistic integrity in the digital age. The project has set up a fund in his name.

Fittingly, many journalists have been sharing their admiration for Carroll, including Pulitzer-winning columnist Connie Schultz, who wrote on Twitter: “John Carroll was an outstanding journalist and a fine man. I knew him as a rare editor who talked less, listened more.”