29 June 2018 — 0715 mdt

When a news publication’s critics are not
satisfied to just write a letter-to-the-editor

Irreducible risks attend reporting, writing commentary, penning novels, publishing photographs.

Half a century ago, as editor of my college’s student newspaper, I came close to getting slugged in my snoot by a jock who took umbrage at my opinion that his sacred sport should be a line item in the drama department’s budget. Eventually, he calmed down, but he never submitted a letter-to-the-editor complaining of my heresy, and I took care not to encounter him alone in a dark alley lest he indulge his preference for direct action.

As the New York Times and Washington Post are reporting, almost all journalists in America have had unpleasant encounters with hotheads who didn’t like a news story or editorial, and almost every newsroom has a persistent critic whose behavior is deeply unsettling. But in the U.S., murders of journalists are exceedingly rare. The killings at the Capital Gazette in Annapolis, MD, were an aberration.

Various writers, especially online, are trying to tie the Annapolis murders to various things they dislike, among them “toxic masculinity,” President Trump’s attacks on the press, and Tweets from right wing provocateurs. If these things they detest, they argue, often implicitly, are eliminated or curtailed, more mass shootings can be prevented. I wish that were so, but mass shootings almost always are the work of a deranged person who sometimes gives advance warning of his deadly intentions, but other times emerges from obscurity.

With most critics of journalism, being nasty, making threats, conducting online vendettas, and so forth, is as far as they go. They satisfy their desire for revenge by making a journalist’s life miserable. Objectively, journalists in the U.S. are at a very low risk on being hurt or killed because of their work.

Bloggers, incidentally, also have their unpleasant critics. Most of these jerks are content to stink up a blog’s comments sections, but as I can attest from personal experience, some make threats, and some of the threateners bear watching. But I keep blogging.