Out of Nowhere: What’s lost and won as newsrooms close their offices for good

Andrea Chamblee, the widow of John McNamara, one of the shooting victims. Chamblee praised the Capital Gazette’s staff for its undaunted coverage in the wake of calamity, and said that such work would be unthinkable now, given recent layoffs and the closure of the newsroom. “They can’t just drive around with a laptop in their car, and go to McDonald’s for the Wi-Fi to upload their story, and take the picture from their iPhone, and be everywhere they want to be and talk to everybody they want to talk to,” she said.

Olivia Sanchez, a government reporter, started working for the Capital Gazette a year ago. She recalled how much she had learned in the newsroom from overhearing experienced reporters interview public officials. “What happens if we’re all just straight out of school and then sitting alone in our bedrooms, at our little desks?” she wondered. “I don’t know what happens to the paper if we stop being able to hold officials accountable in the same way. I don’t know what happens to the community.”

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