Traumatic Week For 'Providence Journal'

By: Joe Strupp Imagine this scenario at your newspaper: A deadly shooting spree starts in your production plant, on a weekend, and the three victims -- two of them dead -- are newspaper employees, and so is the gunman, who also is dead. Throw in a bitter newsroom labor dispute that's dragged on for more than two years, along with the pending verdict in a nationally watched trial of the local mayor.

Well, that's how it was at The Providence (R.I.) Journal after production employee Carlos Pacheco, 38, walked into the paper's printing facility on June 8, a Saturday, and began a rapid-fire rampage that left a co-worker and a supervisor dead, with another employee seriously wounded. Soon after, Pacheco died in a blaze inside his car, leaving reporters, police, and family members to wonder why he'd snapped, while the Journal arranged grief counseling for employees.

"It's been surreal," said Amanda Milkovits, one of the lead reporters on the story who followed it from the first day. "It's been traumatic, and it's probably the hardest thing I've ever done."

The inevitable questions about how a newspaper covers itself -- especially when the story is more deadly and emotional than the typical newsroom contract talks or economic cutbacks -- popped up from the first day, according to Journal employees.

Accusations that the newspaper, owned by Dallas-based Belo, had discouraged reporters from approaching victims' families and Journal production workers swirled early on, all from employees requesting anonymity. "It doesn't feel like we're treating it quite the same way we would if it were about a bank or some place else," said one reporter who had worked on the story. "We feel that we are kind of holding back." Another reporter, who also declined to be identified, stated: "If you really want to read about the story, you should be reading The [Boston] Globe."

Such complaints brought angry, on-the-record responses from other reporters and Executive Editor Joel P. Rawson, who denied any such directives. "My instruction was that we will cover this exactly like we cover anything else," Rawson told E&P. "We did the job." Indeed, a review of Journal coverage found that several production employees and victims' family members were quoted -- or at least were contacted and chose not to comment.

But Journal reporters, along with other media, were barred from the production plant. "I didn't like that," G. Wayne Miller, a reporter and weekend editor who served as Journal day editor on June 10, told E&P. "I thought it was wrong because we needed to talk to those people in their environment, but I understand why they did it."

Others, from inside and outside the paper, claimed that the Journal's coverage lacked certain details that some outlets, such as The Associated Press and The Boston Globe, chose to include. Cited most often at first was the omission of comments from Pacheco's family and others that he had been teased at work about his weight and lack of a girlfriend. For several days, the Journal mentioned claims that the shooter had been pressured on the job to join Teamsters Local 64, which Teamster officials denied. But Journal executives did say they had no evidence of union harassment, and on Friday the paper brought up the "teasing" angle.

"It's no fun," said Rawson, explaining that he hadn't experienced so much stress and tragedy since his days as an Army reconnaissance pilot in Vietnam. "You just do your job." Said Miller, who's spent more than two decades at the paper, "I'm not sure there is any right way to handle it."

Hovering over the tragic events like a dark cloud are the paper's long-running labor problems with the Providence Newspaper Guild, whose members have been working without a contract since the old one expired in February 2000. Workers and Guild officials say the dispute has resulted in dozens of union complaints filed with the National Labor Relations Board and three byline strikes. A fourth byline strike that had been scheduled for last Thursday was postponed until this Thursday because of the shootings.