The Atlantic

When a Local Tragedy Becomes National News

Annapolis residents are struggling to make sense of the attack at the <em>Capital Gazette</em>, which is already being politicized.
Source: Jose Luis Magana / AP

ANNAPOLIS, Md.—Wendi Winters was assigned to report on Davis’ Pub on Friday. The owner, Kevin Colbeck, told me she had pitched them an interview about life at a beloved local hangout; the bar is like “the Cheers of Annapolis,” one bartender told me. These kinds of stories were a regular part of Winters’s beat. The 65-year-old veteran reporter most enjoyed writing her column on the “teen of the week,” her daughter told me, and a recent series on “off-limits” places.

But Winters will never write that story. On Thursday, she was one of five employees shot and killed at the offices of the , Annapolis’s local newspaper.Keith Cyphers, an insurance salesman who works across the hall from the paper, described what he remembers seeing through the glass doors of

You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

More from The Atlantic

The Atlantic5 min readAmerican Government
What Nikki Haley Is Trying to Prove
This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. Nikki Haley faces terrible odds in her home state of
The Atlantic8 min readAmerican Government
The Most Consequential Recent First Lady
This article was featured in the One Story to Read Today newsletter. Sign up for it here. The most consequential first lady of modern times was Melania Trump. I know, I know. We are supposed to believe it was Hillary Clinton, with her unbaked cookies
The Atlantic3 min read
They Rode the Rails, Made Friends, and Fell Out of Love With America
The open road is the great American literary device. Whether the example is Jack Kerouac or Tracy Chapman, the national canon is full of travel tales that observe America’s idiosyncrasies and inequalities, its dark corners and lost wanderers, but ult

Related Books & Audiobooks