The Capital headline - 5 shot dead at The Capital

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Capital Gazette front page goes viral—as GoFundMe explodes

They got the paper out.

 

David Covucci

Tech

Posted on Jun 29, 2018   Updated on May 21, 2021, 12:16 pm CDT

Journalists are no strangers to covering American mass shootings. But yesterday was different, with professionals facing a shooting in their own newsroom, when a gunman opened fire at the Capital Gazette in Annapolis, Maryland, killing five.

The shooting happened at 3:15pm ET. Immediately the newsroom started covering it.

And the staff promised to put out a paper.

Friday morning, the staff put out a paper about it. Here was the front page.

The dedication to the putting out the news in the face of such severe adversity blew other journalists away.

On the opinions page, the staff left it starkly empty, with the names of the colleagues they lost, saying that tomorrow they would be back at it. But today, they were “speechless.”

As the story resonated around the web, a GoFundMe for the paper picked up steam.

Created by journalist Madi Alexander, the GoFundMe wants to “do whatever we possibly can to help them pay for medical bills, funeral costs, newsroom repairs, and any other unforeseen expenses that might arise as a result of this terrible shooting.”

As of this morning, it’s raised $89,000 of a $100,000 goal.

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*First Published: Jun 29, 2018, 8:57 am CDT