I swore, for just a second, I saw him on the streets of Squirrel Hill.

It was a Tuesday morning. The Pittsburgh neighborhood was quiet, the ground wet from morning dew. Most people were commuting to work, taking their kids to school or, sadly, preparing for the funerals of those who died at the Tree of Life shooting just days before.

I thought I saw Rob Hiaasen, my former editor, a 6-foot-5-inch man with silver hair and a small, gold hoop earring, across the street. But that would be impossible.

Rob was killed five months earlier, when a man shot through glass at the Capital Gazette building in Annapolis and murdered my former editor as well as my former colleagues Gerald Fischman, John McNamara and Wendi Winters.

Now, here I was in Pittsburgh, reporting on the aftermath of the Tree of Life synagogue shooting for USA Today and thinking I saw him. My paper, The News Journal in Wilmington, Delaware, is a part of the USA Today network.

This wasn’t the first or last time I thought I saw one of my former Capital colleagues. Or dreamt about them. I dreamt about Rob the night before the announcement that the Capital Gazette staff was a part of Time’s “Person of the Year.”

Sometimes, it feels like my life is divided in two: Before the shooting, and after. At The Daily Orange and at Newhouse, we’re taught that reporters are to remain objective. We’re not the story. We’re never the story. It’s the cardinal rule of journalism.

But what are the rules for when the people who taught you journalism — who gave you your first job in journalism — are shot and killed for doing journalism?

Shortly after the shooting, I went back to The Capital (now in a different building) with a dozen or so volunteers to reprieve reporters who were in the newsroom during the shooting.

At times, it was difficult.

I expected Rob to walk through the door, just finishing his daily afternoon walk. I wanted Wendi to come to my desk and—like a loving, wacky aunt—ask about my (nonexistent) love life. I wanted to overhear John talking about the Nationals, Gerald the most recent opera he had seen.

None of that happened. Instead, I went back to the basics: I wrote crime briefs, I previewed the local renaissance festival, I spoke with some precious kids who made a podcast.

Like my friend and Capital Gazette reporter Chase Cook famously tweeted, we put out the damn paper. Our stories weren’t pre-determined by how many pageviews they might get. We wrote stories about what the community wanted to know and what they needed to know.

In a time when media companies are “pivoting to video,” when governments are killing and arresting reporters, when our commander-in-chief is creating a toxic culture of fake news—I think the only thing we can do now is follow The Capital’s lead. Focus on the basics. Press on.

This December, I put the finishing touches on a longform narrative — a big first for me. I keep thinking Rob would love this story. I was fortunate enough to exchange emails with him a couple days before he died. I thought about mentioning the project then, but it was just in its early stages so I didn’t. I wish I did.

But everyday since June 28, I’ve come to believe that newspapers are in heaven. If Rob read the June 29 issue of The Capital, maybe he’ll read this too.

Throughout working on this project, I’ve been listening to different musical soundtracks. It has helped with the writer’s block. More often than not, “Hamilton” has been blasting through my headphones.

At the end of the musical, the titular character Alexander Hamilton sings: “What is a legacy? It’s planting seeds in a garden you never get to see.”

What’s Rob’s legacy? What about Gerald, John, Rebecca and Wendi? Who will tell their story?

Me. You. Us.

Meredith Newman (‘15) is the health reporter for The News Journal in Wilmington, Delaware. She can be contacted via email at meredithnewman2@gmail.com or on Twitter at @MereNewman.

Published on December 17, 2018 at 11:02 am

Contact Meredith: mhnewman@syr.edu | @MerNewman93