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Capital Gazette Named 2018 Marylanders Of The Year: Baltimore Sun

ANNAPOLIS, MD — The staff of the Capital Gazette newspaper has been named The Baltimore Sun’s 2018 Marylanders of the Year.

The honorable distinction, which The Sun announced Thursday, is awarded each year to an individual or a group of people who “had the biggest impact on the state.”

Hundreds of staffers — including journalists, editors, photographers, and advertising salespeople — have dedicated their careers to the Capital Gazette, a newspaper that can trace its roots to Colonial days. On June 28, their newsroom in Annapolis was ripped apart by gunfire.

That day, a gunman stormed into the newsroom and killed five staffers: Gerald Fischman, Rob Hiaasen, John McNamara, Rebecca Smith, and Wendi Winters. But the tragedy did not — and could not — silence the Capital Gazette.

“I can tell you this: we are putting out a damn paper,” reporter Chase Cook tweeted that day. And they did — as well as every day since.

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“In their quiet exercise of daily courage, they represented not just the best of journalism but the best of humanity,” The Sun said about the 2018 Marylanders of the Year.

As Marylanders of the Year, the staff of the Capital Gazette newspaper “upheld the paper’s mission at great personal cost,” The Sun wrote.

“The process of recovery from trauma is not linear, and it’s not predictable. Those who have experienced an event like this one can never know what might trigger memories and emotions that overwhelm them. Newspapers aren’t predictable either,” The Sun said. “The Capital Gazette journalists can never know what they’ll encounter when they leave the office or pick up the phone. They could find themselves at a crime scene or on the receiving end of a rant about the mainstream media. With every step in the case against the man accused of killing their co-workers, Capital Gazette reporters are the ones going to the courthouse to pick up the documents. Every mass shooting that has followed — and there have been many, from the killings at a Rite Aid warehouse in Harford County to the murders at a Pittsburgh synagogue — represented yet another trial.”

The Sun added: “Yet six months later, they are all still on the job, all still fulfilling the responsibility for which their friends gave their lives.”

Several weeks ago, Time magazine named the Capital Gazette newspaper and four other journalists as its 2018 Person of the Year. The publication, which called the group of journalists “guardians,” said they were selected because their pursuit of the truth landed them in jail or costed them their lives.

Time magazine chose the staff of the Capital Gazette newspaper, murdered Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, Filipina journalist Maria Ressa, and jailed Reuters reporters Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo.


Photo by Encyclopaedia Britannica/Uig/Shutterstock