In my more than an 33 years in newsrooms, I encountered an angry visitor with a gun only twice, and I survived both scares. Today's tragic murders of five people in the offices of the Capital Gazette in Annapolis, Maryland, brought back memories of my experiences years ago.
News personnel are particularly vulnerable to angry, aggrieved people who don't like what you wrote or don't like what you didn't write. Newspapers have to be part of the community. Most smaller newspapers have little in the way of security, and members of the public can stroll in with a news tip, a tidbit of information or a complaint that can turn into a news story. Too much security can stifle news coverage. Jerry Bledsoe, who wrote a column for the Greensboro News & Record and has published several true-crime books, resigned at the Greensboro paper when it moved into a fancy new building with professional guards and other security. Bledsoe had relied on people to walk in off the street and tell him about wild and crazy things that he could write a column or a long news story about. The new security cut off his best news sources, so he resigned and went to work for the Charlotte Observer for a while.
Back in the 1980s, two young men barged into the Lumberton Robesonian newsroom and took the staff hostage. They demanded an investigation of alleged corruption in the Robeson County sheriff's office. Staff members, including at least one I knew, were held for hours and hours at gunpoint before the gunmen were persuaded to give up.
When I was editor of the weekly newspaper in Hamlet more than 40 years ago, I scheduled interviews with all of the candidates in a hotly contested city council election. In order to show that the paper was accurately reporting candidates' positions, I tape recorded all the interviews and printed the questions and responses verbatim. One candidate declined to be interviewed. I told him I was treating everyone the same, so either he would sit for an interview or we would not run an article about him. A few days later, the candidate walked into the newsroom with a lever-action rifle, the kind you've seen in Old West movies. He handed me several pages of paper with his responses to the questions I had asked the other candidates. (Note to self: Next time, complete all the interviews before publishing the questions.) I told him that letting him prepare responses at his leisure instead of responding on-the-spot in a live interview was not fair to the other candidates. He was angry but did not use the rifle he was carrying. Looking back on the incident, I'm amazed that I wasn't more frazzled than I was.
My next armed encounter was in Wilson. An obviously upset young man came into the newsroom and said he wanted to see me. I overheard the exchange and came out of my office, introduced myself to him and offered a handshake. "I ain't shaking your hand," he said, his face red with anger. I asked him what he wanted, and he gave me a prepared announcement saying that the newspaper was wrong when it published a brief item in the court news saying his case (I believe the charge was assault) had been dismissed with leave. He said his attorney had promised him it wouldn't be in the paper if he agreed to the plea. He demanded that we publish his announcement without editing. I explained that we ran all the court news, no exceptions, but the item about him simply said the case was dismissed. That just made him angrier. He stomped out, shouting, "You haven't heard the last from me!"
His anger and what looked like a pistol in his pocket worried me. I tried to keep an eye on the visitor to make sure he left the building and was not lying in wait or attacking someone else. I saw him circle the outside of the building ominously, but he left without further incident. I called the sheriff, who was quite familiar with the man. The sheriff said he'd ask the man's lawyer to explain to him that he got his case dismissed, as promised, but the outcome of the case is still a public document and can be reported by the newspaper.
The next time the man was in the newspaper, it was because his father had shot and killed him in an argument. It was ruled self defense.
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