Local Papers Join In Sniper Hunt

By: It's been an exciting two weeks for James A. Mann, associate managing editor of The Free Lance-Star in Fredericksburg, Va., as confronting a major national story is fairly rare in his parts. Still, "We will be glad when it's over," he said Wednesday. "This is not a fun thing to cover. We're the same as anyone in the community. You're looking over your shoulder wondering if you're in a rifle sight."

While they have met the challenge of covering the "suburban sniper" in different ways, newspapers in Virginia and Maryland near where shootings took place (11 incidents causing nine deaths, and counting) are united in feeling the strain both on nerves and resources.

It's especially difficult because, here, it is simultaneously a local, regional, and national story.
Two of the sniper shootings occurred within five miles of The Free Lance-Star. About 12 people at the paper, nearly half the reporting staff, are covering the story. Also involved are all seven staff photographers, four local-news editors, and a graphic artist. The paper is also cooperating with three local, sibling radio stations.

Kari Pugh, co-lead reporter on the story with Keith Epps, has been working nearly 20 hours of overtime a week lately. "I'm too busy to be scared," she said.
Even as national correspondents flock to the region, The Free Lance-Star has focused on local angles. One article revealed that requests for concealed-weapon permits rose significantly after the shootings as residents sought to protect themselves. Pugh has tried to do some investigative work, but, like the police, she hasn't come up with much.

The paper did not try to interview a local woman seriously wounded Oct. 4, after she asked the media to refrain, partly because she is a possible witness and the sniper is still on the loose. "Every news organization in the world has called me to try to get her phone number," Pugh told E&P, but she has not divulged it.

Even the paper's noncrime coverage has been affected because so many local events have been called off. When high-school football games were postponed from Friday, Oct. 11, to the following Monday, it led the paper to scale back its Saturday issue.

Pugh wishes law-enforcement officials would give out more information. "I'm frustrated," she said. "They say they want the public's help. How are people supposed to help when they don't know what they're looking for?"

Farther north, in Alexandria, The Northern Virginia Journal is one of three papers in the sniper zone owned by Journal Newspapers Inc., which also runs two Maryland papers, The Montgomery Journal in Rockville and The Prince George's Journal in Lanham, and has a newsroom in Manassas, Va. (site of another sniper killing). Sniper news, said Scott McCaffrey, managing editor for the group, has "disrupted everything. The scene shifts each time, and every reporter has had to pick it up in a different newsroom. We've had to be creative, especially at night."

The story has required all reporters to be on standby. Amazingly, Matt Young, 22, who graduated from the Medill Graduate School of Journalism at Northwestern University just six weeks ago, has become one of the paper's lead reporters on the story.

The Montgomery Journal in Rockville, where the shootings began (and home to the task force coordinating the investigation), has a staff of just four reporters and one full-time intern covering both the sniper story and everyday local news.

Amy Dominello, assistant managing editor, admitted that many nonsniper stories have been shelved. "People are calling us asking 'When are you going to do this story? When are you going to do that story?'"

For now, the paper continues to emphasize the impact of the sniper threat on area residents and their community -- such as the effect on local hunters on a new ban on hunting.

Dominello said that although there has been some cooperation between the Journal papers, they mostly have been working independently. "The papers here are their own little fiefdoms," she said.

One of her reporters, Sara Michael, said that while the possibility of more shootings nearby made her a little nervous, it wasn't interfering with her reporting. "You have to separate yourself from the story," she told E&P. "You have to be scared on your own time, not when you're working."