National Press Club recognizes Capital Gazette staff with President’s Award

The staff of the Capital Gazette became honorary members of the National Press Club and won the President’s Award last Thursday.

Club President Andrea Edney said that the honor recognized the journalists at the Annapolis, Md., paper for “their extraordinary valor and their inspiring work” following a horrific newsroom shooting on June 28 that killed five of their colleagues.

The staff published the newspaper the day after the tragedy and hasn't skipped a beat while coping with the loss of their friends.

“Our goal tonight and for the ensuing years is for you to know that you are not alone,” Edney told an audience of more than 200 in the ballroom at the Club’s 45th Journalism Awards dinner. “Tonight we welcome you into our family. We hope you will return often. What we have here are journalists and people who care about journalism. We know that is important to you and your colleagues.”

A copy of the June 29 front page of the Capital Gazette is displayed on the wall of the Club’s Reliable Source bar and grill along with other iconic A1s. About a dozen Capital Gazette staff members attended the awards dinner.

Capital Gazette editor Rick Hutzell said that the relationship between the paper and the people it covers was demonstrated when thousands turned out “to tell us they appreciate the work we do” when members of the staff walked down Main Street in a Fourth of July parade.

“We are a symbol of community, and I’d like to thank my community for having our back every day,” Hutzell said.

He emphasized the granularity with which community papers cover local government and other topics and warned of the consequences of the dwindling number of such publications.

“It provides an agreed upon place to discuss the facts and the issues of the day,” Hutzell said. “Community journalism is an important and endangered part of our industry.”'

The Capital Gazette’s recognition was the highlight of a ceremony in which the Club bestowed more than a dozen awards and three scholarships.

One of the scholarship winners, Cory Johnson of Wauseon, Ohio, struck a theme that would prevail throughout the evening by criticizing President Donald Trump’s frequent attacks on the media.

“We’re not the enemy of the people because we are the people,” said Johnson, who will attend the University of Missouri to study journalism.

Salt Lake Tribune bureau chief Thomas Burr, who won the Washington Regional Reporting Award, also criticized Trump for his characterization of the media. He said that it is the media that uncovers corruption and injustice.

“To be clear, Mr. President, the news media is not the enemy of the people,” said Burr, a former Club president. “We are the enemy of bad people.”

John Donnelly, a reporter for CQRollCall, took Trump to task for threatening government sources who provide critical information to reporters.

“The vast majority of leakers are not traitors, they’re patriots,” said Donnelly, winner of the Michael Dornheim Award for coverage of the military and chair of the Club’s Press Freedom Committee.

In a video, the winner of the Club’s 2017 John Aubuchon Press Freedom Award, Mexican journalist Emilio Gutierrez-Soto, thanked the Club for leading the effort to free him and his son from confinement at an immigration center in El Paso, Texas.

Gutierrez, who has received death threats in Mexico for his reporting on government corruption, is now a Knight-Wallace Fellow at the University of Michigan. The Club is continuing to help Gutierrez secure asylum.

“If deported we believe his life and that of his son, Oscar, are at grave risk,” Edney said. “Now is the time to help. The Club will do its part. We ask you to join us. Because journalism can be a dangerous business.”