Wendi Winters died in a hail of gunfire in a newsroom in Maryland. Her reporting partner remembered her in a series of tweets after Donald Trump called journalists "the enemy of the people" again.
December 6, 2018

Wendi Winters was a Maryland journalist for the Capital Gazette before she was shot dead earlier this year while doing her job in a Maryland newsroom where she should have been able to report on her local stories and do her job without wondering if a crazed gunman was going to kill her that day.

But instead she is dead, remembered by her reporting partner, Joshua McKerrow, who was not at all appreciative of Trump's "enemy of the people" tweet earlier that day.

Here's the punchline that wants to rip my heart out every time I read it. She was 65 years old, a freelancer doing local stories about local people. (See video above)

Journalists are not the enemy of the people. Arrogant, self-centered, egomaniacal, self-tanned, doughy fascists are the enemy of the people. Journalists are supposed to be the truth-tellers. Most succeed, some don't. We call them out when they're wrong, but real honest-to-god journalists are not enemies, but allies.

Rest in peace, Wendi Winters. May those who endanger the lives of real journalists (not right-wing yakkers, but the real deal) rot in hell on earth. Every one.

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