Terence F. Smith

It is cold comfort, of course, but the murderous assault on The Annapolis Capital’s newsroom on June 28 was a colossal failure for the shooter.
If the shooter’s goal was to silence The Capital’s voice, he obviously failed at that. The paper has not missed an issue.
If he hoped to settle some years-old score, some twisted grievance against a columnist and an editor long gone from the paper, he missed entirely. Both were elsewhere when he attacked the newsroom.
If he thought he could echo the “fake news” and “enemy of the people” accusations that are hurled at President Trump’s rallies, he did not.
If, most importantly, he thought he could isolate the Capital from Annapolis by killing five of its finest people, his attack had exactly the opposite effect.
In fact, the tragedy instead vividly illustrated the extraordinary bond that exists between a community and its newspaper that, in the case of The Capital and Annapolis, has been built up in good times and bad over nearly three centuries.
That bond was expressed in the universal horror among Annapolitans at the first news of the attack, by the poignant candlelit vigil down Main Street the night after the shooting, by the flags at half-staff, by the applause that welcomed the contingent of Capital staffers in the July 4 parade and by the outpouring of sympathy and support that continues every day in every issue of The Capital.
That bond between the community and its newspaper was not nearly so obvious before the shooter acted. (Note: I’m deliberately not using the shooter’s name, lest he get some of the notoriety that he apparently craves.) Like any town and its newspaper, there have been controversies and even angry arguments over specific issues over the years between the Capital and some of its readers. Such battles are inevitable and doubtless will not stop.
But we can now see, from the public reaction to this attack, that the people of Annapolis care deeply about their newspaper and consider it an essential, integral part of the community.
“Journalism Matters” t-shirts dotted the July 4 parade, along with others that read: “Press ON Annapolis, “Annapolis Strong” and “Respect the Locals.” Those sentiments may not be surprising given what has happened, but they were not apparent or so close to the surface before the June 28 attack. The Annapolis public clearly sees the journalists at The Capital as what they are, not “enemies of the people,” but the people themselves.
The question has been raised whether the shooter was motivated or inspired by the hostile anti-media attitudes expressed nationally these days. Only he can answer that definitively, but put me down as skeptical. From everything we have learned about the shooter’s long-standing grudge with the paper, his assault appears to have been a personal act of vengeance rather than a political statement. He was trying to settle a personal score, not make some broader comment about the media. Even in that, he failed.
The true victims, of course, are the five who perished: Gerald Fischman, 61, the editorial page editor; Rob Hiaasen, 59, editor and columnist; John McNamara, 56, sportswriter; Rebecca Smith, 34, sales assistant and Wendi Winters, 65, features writer. And their families. And the two staffers who were injured, but survived.
The people of Annapolis have already shown their appreciation of the victims and will continue do so through the Families Fund that has been established. A fund-raising concert is being planned for later in the summer.
These and other efforts will illustrate again and again the palpable bond between the city and its newspaper that seems stronger than ever after the shooting.

In the end, after two nightmarish days set off by the mad shooting June 28 in the newsroom of the Annapolis Capital, after countless questions in a score of radio and television interviews, after trying to explain the unexplainable, it was the candlelit vigil down Main Street on Friday night that got to me. As a life-long journalist, I am supposed to be detached from the stories I cover, but this one hit my soul.
The vigil marchers were silent as they headed toward Annapolis’ City Dock. The respectful spectators on the sidewalks barely made a sound.
“Honor the journalists,” said one speaker at the rally of the five who died, of the injured and of those that worked tirelessly to put out a fine Friday edition of the paper under the most difficult of circumstances. In the darkness, the audience applauded and the intimate bond between the people of Annapolis and The Annapolis Capital was palpable.
Speaker Mike Busch, the delegate for Annapolis, spoke of his hometown paper — “The Evening Capital,“ he called it, as it once was known. He said he knew four of the five journalists “who were murdered.” “Murdered,” he repeated, “there is no other way to put it.” He was right.
As a guest columnist who has written in this space for the last three-plus years, I am not a member of the Capital staff, nor can I speak for them. But I’d like to think that I am a distant cousin in the Capital family and certainly I am a colleague.
As such, I fielded dozens of requests Thursday and Friday for interviews from near and far. News organizations called me for comment because editor Rick Hutzell and the surviving staff had rightly decided to devote all their energy into putting out their newspaper. “I’ll let my column speak for me,” Rick explained to me in an email Saturday morning. The “speechless,” nearly blank Capital editorial page on Friday was eloquent in its emptiness.
The breadth of national and international interest in the Annapolis story was remarkable. I got requests for comment from all over the United States, from Canada, the U.K., Australia and Brazil. This assault on journalists and journalism resonated far and wide.
As it happened, Jared Ramos’s attack appeared to be an act of personal vengeance, not partisan politics. He seemed to be settling a score against the newspaper, not scoring points in some ideological debate about “fake news.”
The journalists Ramos killed were not “enemies of the people,” they were “the people.” They were people doing a job that is worthy and protected by the first amendment to the constitution.
May they rest in peace.

Three months into his mayoralty, Gavin Buckley is in the vision business. Still. Just like his campaign last fall. Morning ’til night, the Mayor is out drumming up support for a vision of Annapolis remade.
In separate conversations several weeks ago and this past week, he described his vision of a different, more vibrant Annapolis:
” A remodeled, more inviting Market House, open and operating, he hopes, by May 1
” A repaved and redesigned Main Street, with a bike and trolley lane and expanded sidewalk dining
” Pedestrian and bikeways across busy thoroughfares like Forest Drive and Spa Road
” Improved public housing and expanded after-school programs.
” Swimmable creeks and coves
” Most ambitious of all, a completely redesigned and inviting City Dock area that he hopes will prove to be a magnet for Annapolitan families and visitors alike.

It’s an expansive agenda and being Annapolis, it will take time. Nothing happens quickly here, nothing. Especially not when you have to build coalitions among preservationists who treasure this lovely city’s rich history, and others who respect the past but want to embrace the future. Molasses, it seems to me, moves faster.
But Gavin Buckley is a mayor in motion. He has been out rallying support at community meetings and visiting, when he can, innovative city redevelopments elsewhere. Just recently he went to see and admired The Wharf, the completely transformed, newly hip waterfront shopping, dining and entertainment area in Southwest Washington D.C. He came back with photos on his cellphone that he displays to anyone who will take the time to look. Just ask him.
Of course, it all takes money. And he still has to balance a budget, negotiate with city employee unions, hire a new city manager and deal with all the daily crises that arise in this or any busy community. Inevitably, there will be opposition to many or most of his ideas.
But he is nothing if not enthusiastic.
“I’m loving it,” he says of his still-new job. “I’m going at twice the pace I did during the campaign, which I didn’t think possible.”
Of all of Buckley’s visions, he is most excited about the transformation he wants to see take place around City Dock, where a parking lot currently occupies the best real estate in Annapolis and cheapens the waterfront view.
In its place, he sees a piazza, a hardscape public plaza that he wants to call Lafayette Square, with a spray park for children and open seating, a promenade around the waterfront, a pumping station and two-level underground garage, a “Cannery” arts center like the Torpedo Factory in Alexandria and, as an anchor, a boutique “Maritime” hotel with a penthouse-level terrace bar overlooking the harbor. A raised sea wall would provide an added three feet of protection against the sort of “nuisance flooding” that inundated the area during high tides last week.
In Buckley’s vision, a public-private partnership between the city and a development team led by the entrepreneur Harvey Blonder, the Washington architect Peter A. Fillat III and others would invest some $65 million in the hotel and underground garage. The city’s contribution would be the land, probably as a lease.
If the details can be worked out, the National Sailing Hall of Fame could be housed in the hotel or an adjacent building.
A few weeks ago, it looked as if Newport, Rhode Island, which thinks of itself as the “Yachting Capital of America,” might lure the financially-troubled Hall of Fame with an offer of a large waterfront building.
Not so fast: what seemed initially like a generous proposal has been watered down and has not yet been approved by the Newport City Council, so the Hall of Fame may well remain in Annapolis, especially if Gavin Buckley has anything to say about it.
“I hope we can keep it here in Annapolis,” he said last week. “It’s added value to our identity as the ‘Sailing Capital of America.”
That remains to be seen. But the Mayor in Motion wants movement, not the “analysis paralysis” that he says has been the city’s specialty in years past.
“We have a wonderful, beautiful city,” he says. “But we can make it better.”

If you are wondering how the rest of the world views the United States a year into the Age of Trump, a small, unscientific sampling was available last week aboard Crystal Symphony, a cruise ship sailing the waters off Western Australia.
The occasion was a panel discussion: “Ocean Views: Perspectives from Four Continents” in front of several hundred passengers who hailed from North America, Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia. The panelists included your faithful correspondent from the U.S.; Michael, a British historian; Danielle, an Australian olympic gold medalist in water polo and Herta, a woman banking executive and lecturer from Nairobi, Kenya.
To a person, the international panelists said they were confounded by the first year’s performance of President Trump and dismayed by its impact on the rest of the world.
“It’s hard to understand what he is doing, much less why he is doing it,” said Herta.
The panelists lamented the loss of U.S. leadership in the world, expressed concern about the rise of China and alarm about the ongoing war of words between North Korea and the Trump Administration. The Doomsday Clock, they said, is rightly set at two minutes to midnight and the world has every reason to be anxious.
The discussion took place as the ship sailed the warm, blue waters of the Indian Ocean to Perth, the capital of Western Australia and, as it happens, the sun-drenched childhood home of Gavin Buckley, the new mayor of Annapolis. This being the height of the Australian summer, Perth was about 50 degrees warmer last week than Annapolis and the beautiful beaches were busy.
As part of the discussion, the moderator polled the audience on how they would vote for U.S. president today versus a year ago. On this same ship on November 10, 2016, two days after the U.S. election, the passengers aboard at that time chose Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton, 52-to-38 per cent. Last week, the passengers currently aboard choose Clinton over Trump in a purely theoretical rematch 47 to 41 per cent. Not the same passengers, of course, but a significant switch in sentiment none the less.
Why the sour view of Trump? “We know him better now,” an Australian woman said.
Using hand-held polling devices, the passengers expressed their view on several other topics. By substantial margins, they said the ME TOO campaign in the United States and elsewhere was growing and likely to change the way men and women relate to each other over the long term. By equally big numbers, they said they saw a future for public broadcasting in an era of fake news, fragmentation and political polarization.
With an eye towards the upcoming winter Olympics in South Korea, the passengers and the panelists lamented the impact of doping on the Olympic movement and were pessimistic about the chances of curbing it. They also criticized the interference of international politics in the Olympics, but agreed that the prospect of North and South Korea marching into the opening ceremony under the same flag might reduce tensions on that peninsula much the way ping pong diplomacy helped thaw relations between the United States and China a generation ago.
The passengers were not unanimous on any of these topics, nor are they necessarily representative of a broader view, but they hail from more than 20 countries and share a similar, almost shocked view of President Trump and his foreign policy.
Danielle the Olympian said Australians in general were in disbelief over the headlines from Washington these days.
Herta the executive from Nairobi said the Trump Administrations’ skepticism on climate change was a huge concern. She said that as the United States deliberately shrinks its role in international affairs, China is rushing in to fill the gap, especially in Africa, which she described as the fastest growing continent with the greatest untapped potential. “China is buying up industries and investing,” she said. “Where is the United States?”
Michael the British historian agreed. “China is playing the long game,” he said, “the U.S. is focused on the short game. That alone changes the balance of power.”