Check out the Butler Eagle, the local Pennsylvania newspaper covering the Trump rally shooting

BUTLER, Pa. (AP) — When Gunshots Ring Out at Trump Rally Where she worked, Butler Eagle reporter Irina Bucur collapsed like everyone else. She was terrified.

She wasn’t really cold though.

Bucur tried to text her mission leader, despite unstable cell reception, to tell him what was happening. She took mental notes of what the people in front of and behind her were saying. She used her phone to film the scene. All before she felt safe again.

When the biggest story in the world happened small hamlet in western Pennsylvania Last week, Butler’s newspaper didn’t just attract media from all over the world. Journalists at the Eagle, the community’s resource since 1870 and struggling to survive like thousands of local newspapers across the country, had to make sense of the chaos in their area and the global attention that followed.

Photographer Morgan Phillips, who stood on a podium in the middle of a field with Trump’s audience on Saturday night, remained standing and continued to work, documenting the story. After Secret Service agents hustled the former president into a waiting car, people around her turned to shout vitriol at reporters.

Days later, Phillips’ eyes filled with tears as he recounted that day.

“I felt really hated,” said Phillips, who, like Bucur, is 25. “And I didn’t expect that.”

Mobilize in the most difficult situations

“I’m very proud of my newsroom,” said Donna Sybert, the Eagle’s editor-in-chief.

After putting together a cover story plan, she had run off to a nearby fishing trip with her family. A colleague, Jamie Kelly, called to say something had gone terribly wrong, and Sybert rushed to the newsroom, helping update the Eagle’s website until 2 a.m. Sunday.

Bucur was tasked with talking to community members at the rally, as well as those who had set up lemonade stands on the hot day and people who had parked their cars. She had done her reporting and settled in to text updates on what Trump was saying for the website.

The shooting changed everything. Bucur tried to interview as many people as possible. Slightly dizzy after authorities evacuated the scene, she forgot where she had parked. That gave her more time to report.

“Going into journalist mode allowed me to take my mind off the situation a little bit,” Bucur said. “Once I got up, I wasn’t thinking at all. I just thought I had to interview people and get the story out because I had a deadline.”

She and colleagues Steve Ferris and Paula Grubbs were invited to collect their reporting and impressions for a story in the Eagle’s eight-page special print edition on Monday.

“The first shots rang out like fireworks,” they wrote. “But as they continued, people in the crowd at the Butler Farm Show fell to the ground: A mother and father told their children to crouch down. A young man cowered in the grass. Behind him, a woman began to pray.”

The special edition has clearly resonated with Butler and beyond. Additional copies are available for sale for $5 in the Eagle’s lobby. That’s already a steal. On eBay, Sybert said, she’s seen them sell for as much as $125.

A small newspaper struggling to survive

Beyond its status as a local newspaper, the Eagle is an endangered species.

The Eagle has resisted the idea of ​​being bought by a major chain, which has often stripped the news media. The Eagle has been in the same family since 1903; its patriarch, Vernon Wise, is now 95. Jamie Wise Lanier, a fifth-generation member of the family, came from Cincinnati this week to congratulate the staff on a job well done, said General Manager Tammy Schuey.

Six editions are printed each week and a digital site is paid, but some shooting stories have been downgraded. The Eagle’s circulation is 18,000, Schuey said, with about 3,000 in digital form.

The United States has lost a third of its newspapers since 2005, as the Internet has eaten into once-robust advertising revenues. On average, 2.5 newspapers farm every week in 2023, according to a Northwestern University study. The majority of them were in small communities like Butler.

In 2019, The Eagle newspaper abandoned a newsroom across town, consolidating space into the building where its printing press is located. It has diversified, starting a billboard business and taking on additional printing jobs. It even stores the remains of a long-closed local circus and allows residents to tour it.

The Eagle has about 30 employees, but is currently short two reporters and a photographer. Cabinets of old photos sit amid the clutter of desks in the newsroom, with a whiteboard listing which staffers will be on call on weekends.

His staff is a mix of young people like Bucur and Phillips, who tend to join larger institutions, and those who settle in Butler. Sybert has worked at the Eagle since 1982. Schuey was hired in 1991 to teach the composing room staff how to use Macs.

“It’s a tough business,” Schuey said. “We’re not out of the woods yet.”

Local understanding makes a huge difference

When a big story hits a city, with national and international journalists following it, local media remains a valuable and valued resource.

The Eagle knows the terrain. It knows the local officials. Smart national reporters who parachute into a small community that is suddenly making news know to seek out local reporters. Several of them have contacted the Eagle, Schuey said.

Familiarity helps in other ways. Bucur encountered people at the rally who were wary of national journalists but answered her questions, and the same was true of some authorities. She tapped her network of Facebook friends for help with reporting.

This basic trust is common. Many people in small towns have more trust in their local newspapers, said Rick Edmonds, a media analyst at the Poynter Institute.

“It’s really nice to support local people,” said Jeff Ruhaak, a trucking company supervisor who stopped during a meal at the Monroe Hotel to discuss the Eagle’s coverage. “I think they did a pretty good job of coverage for their size.”

The Eagle also has another advantage: It won’t disappear when the national reporters leave. The story won’t end there. Those injured must recover, and investigations will determine who is responsible for a potential assassin’s ability to shoot Trump.

In short: Responsible journalism as civic leadership in difficult times.

“Our community has been through a traumatic experience,” Schuey said. “I was there. We have healing to do and I think the newspaper is a critical tool to help the community through this.”

The Eagle’s employees are also having to get back on their feet, as Phillips’s emotions show. Management is trying to give its employees a few days off, perhaps with the help of journalists from surrounding communities.

Bucur said she would hate to see Butler turned into a political prop, with the assassination used as a kind of rallying cry. The divisions of national politics had already seeped into local meetings, and staffers felt the strain.

Sybert and Schuey look at each other, trying to remember what the biggest story Butler Eagle reporters have worked on was. Was it a tornado that killed nine people in the 1980s? A particularly bad car accident? Trump had an uneventful campaign visit in 2020. But there’s no doubt what’s at the top of the list today.

Despite the stress of the assassination attempt, covering the event was a personal revelation for Bucur, a soft-spoken woman who grew up 30 miles south of Pittsburgh and studied psychology in college. Her plans changed when she took a communications class and loved it.

“That’s when I realized,” she said, “that journalism was my thing.”

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David Bauder writes about media for the AP. Follow him on http://twitter.com/dbauder.