Capital Gazette

We at The Daily Californian turned to our staff and asked: What does journalism mean to you? And the answer we received was simple: truth and hope.

Even now in retrospect, there doesn’t seem to be any rational explanation for the way in which I became a journalist other than pure, sheer luck.

My journalism might upset a few stoners, but never did it lead me to see myself, to steal from Ernest Hemingway, dead in the rain.

Journalists seemed to have nine lives. Nothing could shake them off the trail, no matter what the bad guys had up their sleeves. The sheer power of truth seemed to protect journalists — at least, it worked for Tintin.

Writing about art put me close to so many artists. It was exhilarating. But I was only ever close.

Whatever you may think of journalists in this moment, the freedom of the press is a constitutionally guaranteed right, as it should be in a country that boasts a legacy of democracy.

It was a big deal to me. It gave me hope that I would still have an opportunity to write my heart out, and that’s just what I was able to do.

Here my mind rested for a moment on the central question tying Trump, Yiannopoulos and the Capital Gazette together: What do we really think about free speech, and what is threatening it?

Right now, journalism may feel like a bumpy, even frightening road, but that does not excuse writers to throw down their pens and scrap their drafts.

What else can I do, other than ball my hands and keep reporting? I know it’s important that these stories are told, and I want to tell them.