S29 Trailer | Embedded: Capital Gazette

Speaker 1 This is a CBC podcast.

Speaker 1 Hey, I'm Kelly McEvers from NPR's Embedded, and we are bringing you our series, Capital Gazette, on Uncover.

Speaker 1 One day in the summer of 2018, at a small newspaper in Annapolis, Maryland, the staff was doing what they do.

Speaker 1 One reporter was writing the annual guide to local government agencies, another was putting out the results of a primary election.

Speaker 1 And then,

Speaker 1 right in the middle of the day, a man with a gun shot his way into their office and killed five people.

Speaker 1 Hours later, one of the survivors, Celine Sanfelis, was on CNN. Celine, where were you and what did you first hear?

Speaker 2 I mean, I remember I was working at my desk when I heard the shots, and it took a lot of time.

Speaker 1 She tells Anderson Cooper her story. But then at one point, she sort of interrupts herself and says this terrible truth about mass shootings.

Speaker 2 This is going to be a story for how many days? Less than a week. People will forget about us after a week.

Speaker 1 People will forget about us. Celine was saying this nine months after the shooting at a concert in Las Vegas, four months after the high school shooting in Parkland, Florida.

Speaker 1 She knew how this was going to go.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 2 I just don't know what I want right now, right? But I'm going to need more

Speaker 2 than a couple days of news coverage and some thoughts and prayers because

Speaker 2 it's

Speaker 2 our whole lives have been shattered.

Speaker 1 So what does happen to people like Celine after the news coverage ends?

Speaker 1 To answer that, we spent two years reporting on the staff at her newspaper, the Capitol Gazette. We wanted to know, what's it like to go back to work?

Speaker 1 Chase asked me something like, we are putting out a paper tomorrow, right? And I remember saying it like a little defensively and like just a little

Speaker 1 angrily. I was like, yes, we are putting out a paper tomorrow.

Speaker 2 What if someone's sending us more death threats or what if somebody sends me a death threat and I don't see it and then somebody comes and kills all my friends and it's my fault because I didn't read the email.

Speaker 1 What's it like to cover a story you were the subjects of? You know, half the editorial staff died, or maybe a third. And then who else could do it?

Speaker 1 None of the reporters could because they're witnesses. I can't think of another situation where journalists have covered an attack on their own newsroom.
How does it feel to sit in the same courtroom?

Speaker 1 as the man accused of shooting your friends. So it's not like I was afraid of him, but just kind of like,

Speaker 1 you know, this is the person who has changed all our lives and so many other lives, you know, forever.

Speaker 1 And he's going to be right there.

Speaker 1 And how do you figure out how to keep going? I think that a lot of it was about

Speaker 1 looking each other in the eye and saying, it's okay that we're alive.

Speaker 1 That's coming Thursday on Embedded from NPR.

Speaker 1 For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca/slash podcasts.