Last Updated: May 20, 1999
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Security
Even in the face of the deaths of two newspaper workers
by gunmen in one year, newspapers differ in their approaches toward newsroom
security
One day last spring, a suicidal ex-convict slipped into the newsroom
at the Concord (N.H.) Monitor through a side entrance. Armed with a .357
Magnum and a .380 semiautomatic, both handguns loaded and in his backpack,
he announced he wanted to tell his story to a reporter and he was only
going to ask once.
A savvy city editor managed to coax the gunman into an enclosed office.
There the man’s parole officer, by telephone, talked him out of doing any
harm while newsroom employees quietly evacuated the building. After 90
minutes, the man surrendered to the police.
During this April 29 incident, no one was hurt or taken hostage. But
it was enough to scare the newspaper’s management into beefing up security.
“It’s a very nerve-racking thing to see how easily people can get into
a building,” said Monitor publisher Tom Brown. “Now, everything is locked
except for the front entrance.”
Not long ago, security guards, surveillance cameras, employee access
cards and visitor sign-in logs distinguished the nation’s big metropolitan
dailies from smaller newspapers like the Concord Monitor, circulation 22,000.
Indeed, many small newspapers still cling to the practice of maintaining
no restrictions on public access to their buildings as a matter of journalistic
principle.
However, increasing numbers of small to mid-sized papers feel pressured
to add the security measures once deemed necessary only by their big-city
counterparts. The reason, explained Jim Crutchfield, assistant to the publisher
at Philadelphia Newspapers Inc., is the “very real threat posed by the
increase in guns in our society and the willingness of some crazy people
to use them.”
In 1990, the Monitor moved from its downtown location into a new building
a few miles outside of town. Unlike the old building, in which access was
free flowing both from the outside and from one department to the next,
the new building has a locking system that can restrict movement easily.
Production, which always has people coming and going, can be locked to
prevent access to the newsroom, Brown said. The building is accessible
from only two entrances, one for the public, the other for employees.
Before the gunman incident, the employee entrance, which requires a
special card to get in, was kept unlocked. “That’s how the person came
in,” Brown said. Now, it’s locked at all times. “You trade off security
for convenience,” he said.
Visitors must stop at a reception area and be escorted in by the person
they are coming to see, Brown said. In the future, visitors may be required
to sign in and wear special passes once inside. The idea is to make the
public realize they are going to be seen when they enter the building,
Brown said.
Dario DiMare, a Boston-based architect who specializes in newspaper
building design, says the majority of his clients, which range in size
from 4,000-circulation dailies to The Wall Street Journal, have concerns
about security. “Most newspapers nowadays are putting in security systems,”
DiMare said. They are usually limiting and controlling public access, often
using just one entrance and the services of a receptionist. “The bigger
newspapers also use a guard,” DiMare said.
When DiMare first started designing newspapers in 1982, he said, there
wasn’t as much concern about random acts of violence. “Security was not
as big an issue,” DiMare said. Since then, a number of highly publicized
killings “have fostered the desire for security,” DiMare said. Still, he
said, at many newspapers now, “you can walk right in if you just say the
right word or act the right way.”
But that appears to be changing. Most of the roughly three dozen editors
who responded recently to an informal e-mail survey said they either had
a security system in place or were considering one. The large newspapers
that responded said their systems had been in place for many years.
The Dallas Morning News, for example, has had controlled access through
its front and rear doors for over 20 years, according to editor Ralph Langer.
Employees show badges while visitors and vendors sign in for stick-on badges,
Langer said. He added that several years ago, a member of the News’ ownership
family was kidnapped and held for ransom. But Langer wasn’t sure if this
was the incident that prompted the current security system.
At the San Francisco Chronicle, Dave Hyams, director of news operations,
is certain about the event that led to heightened building security at
his workplace. It was the 1974 kidnapping of Patricia Hearst, daughter
of San Francisco Examiner publisher Randolph Hearst. After the kidnapping,
both the Hearsts and the Theriot family, owners of the Chronicle, immediately
instituted security procedures, Hyams said.
At the Chronicle, those procedures “have been refined and tightened,”
Hyams said. “We now have card keys to open certain doors and to make the
elevator go up (it goes down without the card for fire department reasons).”
There are additional procedures that are standard practice for downtown
businesses in the 1990s, Hyams said. Among these are a sign-in book and
clearance procedures for visitors.
Smaller newspapers reported more recent changes in security measures.
Allison Walzer, editor at The Times Leader in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., circulation
50,000, said there is an electronic card entry system for building doors
and each floor of her newspaper.
“The specific incident that sparked this idea was a mentally challenged
woman who stuck a burning cigarette in my face and spat on me twice,” Walzer
said. “Our newspaper building is in the middle of the downtown, and we
have had several mentally disturbed people who used to wander through our
halls.”
The Brazosport Facts in Clute, Texas, circulation 17,000, “is literally
grappling with security issues” right now, said managing editor Wanda Garner
Cash. A year ago, an irate reader demanded to see me for an explanation
of why I declined to print his letter to the editor,” Cash said. “He was
loud and incoherent in the front lobby, berating the receptionist and the
newspaper. When I tried to explain that his letter failed to meet our libel
standards, he grabbed the day’s issue of the paper off the counter and
began shredding it.”
Cash managed to get the reader out of the building and into the parking
lot, where he took off before the police arrived. About a month later,
the same man was arrested in association with a series of bomb scares at
several locations around town. He is now awaiting trial.
Currently, the Facts office is open, with visitors allowed in most areas
of the building. While there is no firm security plan yet, managers there
are leaning toward installing coded-access doors that can be opened only
by the receptionist or from within each department, Cash said.
Not everyone is responding to the day’s increasing violence by beefing
up security. Three editors said they had no security concerns and no plans
to increase restrictive measures. “We’re among the many who won’t interrupt
our nonsecurity atmosphere — until there’s a need to do so,” wrote A.L.
Alford Jr., editor and publisher of the Lewiston (Idaho) Morning Tribune,
circulation 24,000.
Interestingly, publishers at two small newspapers where employees have
been murdered on the job, said that they had no plans to add security measures.
Howard Kaiser, publisher of The Evening News in Sault Ste. Marie, Mich.,
circulation 7,000, where a circulation director was shot and killed by
an independent contractor July 23, said newspapers should not isolate themselves
from their communities. “It would disrupt business to try and screen everybody
who walks into this building,” he said.
John Harrigan, publisher of the weekly News and Sentinel in Colebrook,
N.H., was more strident. At his newspaper last year, editor Dennis Joos
was shot and killed in the parking lot as part of an incident involving
the deaths of two state troopers and a judge. “If anyone has the right
to draw a Fort Apache mentality, we do,” Harrigan said. “But none of us
would want it. We love the give and take that goes with the characters.”
The News and Sentinel is a country newspaper, Harrigan said. “People
are welcome to walk in. We do not have a gate. We do not have a buzzer.
We do not have armed guards. We have no barriers.” And it will stay that
way “for as long as I draw breath,” Harrigan said.
Concord Monitor publisher Brown said he has many of the same concerns
about public access. “But you have to strike a balance,” he said. He believes
it is possible to make simple changes that may prevent random incidents
of violence, such as sign-in logs, visitor passes and limiting access to
newspaper buildings. “You can do a lot to improve security and to discourage
these kinds of incidents short of creating a Fort Knox type of place,”
Brown said.
On another note, many editors said that no security system could fully
prevent the kind of killing that took place in Colebrook or Sault Ste.
Marie. “We’re all vulnerable to a truly determined assailant,” said Paul
Merkoski, editor at The Press of Atlantic City, circulation 77,000. His
newspaper employs security guards, video monitors and electronic locks
and keys to protect employees and property. “We think we’ve taken the steps
to minimize the risk to our employees and — in the end — minimizing the
risk is the best you can hope for,” Merkoski said.
Wendell is a reporter at the Sun Journal in Lewiston, Maine.
