Week 3: Leadership in times of crisis

his week was an eventful week in the newsroom. It seemed as if every day, there was a new crisis to be managed: Supreme Court decisions, Supreme Court justices retiring, protests, government policies, mass shootings — you name it, it happened.

Personally, I didn’t get to cover most of those topics; being an intern, I’m not doing those huge front-page stories yet. But each and every event resonated through the newsroom, and I got to go out and cover a few of the Long Island rallies for the Families Belong Together movement and collaborate on a bigger story.

The event that resonated with me most, however, was the Capital Gazette shooting. At first, I was shocked that another shooting had happened, and I reacted the way I usually do with these events; I was angry, sad and disbelieving. 20 minutes later, I saw an article that NYPD was sending officers to New York City’s largest papers for protection. At that moment, I felt like a target — a sitting duck at a large news organization, that like the Capital Gazette covers local news and could easily have been chosen for the shooting. I’m from El Salvador, homeland of the MS-13. I know what general danger feels like, but I’ve never felt like a target before. And that day, I did.

Although it was eventually found out that the shooter held a grudge against the paper based on past lawsuits and defamation, the first things everybody thought were: “Donald Trump has been calling the media the number one enemy of the people. Could his rhetoric have caused this?” or “Milo Yiannopoulos told people to “gun down journalists” on sight, could this have caused this?” It’s a terrifying thought, and to me, it really highlights how important our leader’s rhetoric is in today’s world. In a way, these leaders have designated the members of the press as part of the out group, which according to Social Identity Theory, leaders that build strong in and out group identities have a longer chance of staying in power and of swaying people’s opinions. As part of the out group, I must admit that I’m a little worried as to what the future would bring.

Something about Newsday that interested me was that even though there seemed to be a lot of things going on that might seem to many as a time of “crisis”, there was very little leadership reassuring people. I could hear reporters talking among themselves and whispering, but no figure of authority immediately came forward to reassure people. About 6 hours later, someone who I didn’t know sent out a mass email saying Suffolk County police would increase patrols around the building, but by then it felt too little, too late. As a member of the organization, I would have appreciated someone in a leadership position, such as the publisher or editor in chief, or even one of the normal editors, to makena statment, even just honoring the victims. According to terror management theory, people prefer charismatic and task-oriented leaders in times of crisis when people are reminded of their mortality, because they bring a sense of control. However, in Newsday, there seemed to be no leadership whatsoever. Life in the newsroom continued as usual, and I think that’s not necessarily the way it should be. At the very least, they should have reassured the naive, innocent interns who don’t have any experience in dealing with things of this nature.