Editor & Publisher

EDITOR’S NOTE:

— Robin Blinder, robin@editorandpublisher.com

Over this past month, I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve cried over this story. (My family will tell you that I’m an emotional person on my best days.) I couldn’t get Kimberly Mata-rubio and the rest of the Uvalde Leader-times newsroom out of my mind. I prayed. I checked in with Gretchen, knowing she was bearing witness to some accounts that would stick with her. We have cried together over the phone and on Zoom. I edited her cover story with tears streaming down my face — knowing full well that what we were experiencing was a drop in the bucket to those in newsrooms like Uvalde.

In an email that accompanied her cover story submission, Gretchen wrote, “Very hard to do those interviews, some of which didn’t make it into the story. I had some pretty graphic and gruesome stories relayed to me that didn’t make it in, by choice. Made me appreciate some of those issues these newsrooms are grappling with, about what is publishable and what should be outof-bounds.

“Some reporters spoke with me but didn’t want their memories published, so I respected that. So much trauma. So many journalists who reported on Columbine and Sandy Hook have left journalism. That was surprising to me, but I guess it shouldn’t be.

“But those stories will stay with me forever.”

On our Zoom call, she recounted crying with her sources and some of the gut-wrenching stories that she felt were just too graphic, too raw to include.

If your newsroom has dealt with something of this magnitude, my heart goes out to you. I hope you’re taking care of each other. You’re on the front lines of this fight. If your newsroom has yet to cover a story this horrific, prepare yourselves now. To paraphrase Kimberly Matarubio in her testimony to the House of Representatives hearing on gun violence, “Somewhere out there is a mom (newsroom) listening to our testimony thinking ‘I can’t even imagine their pain’ not knowing our reality will someday be hers (theirs).”

REPORTING ON SCHOOL SHOOTINGS

en-us

2022-07-01T07:00:00.0000000Z

2022-07-01T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://editorandpublisher.pressreader.com/article/282492892391305

Editor and Publisher