BUTLER, Pa. – When gunshots rang out at the Trump rally where she was working, Butler Eagle reporter Irina Bucur fell to the ground like everyone else. She was terrified.
However, she hardly froze.
Bucur tried to text her assignment editor, via cellphone service, to tell her what was going on. 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 standing up again.
When the world’s biggest story came to the small western Pennsylvania village of Butler a week ago, it didn’t just attract media from everywhere else.
Journalists at the Eagle, a community resource since 1870 and struggling to survive like thousands of local papers across the country, had to understand the chaos in their own backyard — and the global scrutiny that followed.
Photographer Morgan Phillips, who stood on a riser in the middle of a field with Trump’s audience that Saturday night, stayed on her feet and kept working, documenting the story.
After Secret Service officers ushered the former president into a waiting car, people around her turned to shout urgently at reporters.
A few days later, Phillips’ eyes filled with tears recounting the day.
“I just felt so hated,” said Phillips, who like Bucur is 25. “And I never expected that.”
Mobilization in the most difficult situations
“I’m very proud of my newsroom,” said Donna Sybert, managing editor of the Eagle.
Having set up a cover-up plan, she had escaped for a nearby fishing trip with her family.
A colleague, Jamie Kelly, called to say something had gone horribly wrong, and Sybert rushed back to the newsroom, helping to update the Eagle’s website by 2 a.m. Sunday.
Bucuri’s job had been to talk to community members attending the rally, along with those who set up a lemonade stand on the hot day and people who parked cars.
She had done her reporting and received text updates of what Trump was saying for the website.
The shooting changed everything. Bucur tried to interview as many people as he could. A little dazed after the authorities cleared the lot, she forgot where she had parked. This gave her more time for reporting.
“Going into reporter mode allowed me to distract myself a bit from the situation,” Bucur said. “I just got up, I wasn’t thinking at all. I was just thinking that I needed to interview people and get the story out because I was on a deadline.”
She and colleagues Steve Ferris and Paula Grubbs were asked to compile their reporting and impressions for a story in the Eagle’s eight-page special print edition on Monday.
“The first shots went off like fireworks,” they wrote. “But when they went on, people in the crowd at the Butler Farm Show venue fell to the ground: a mother and father told their children to bend over. A young man crouched in the grass. Behind him, a woman began to pray.”
The special edition clearly resonated with Butler and beyond. Additional copies are available for sale for $5 in the Eagle lobby. This is already a bargain. On eBay, Sybert said, she’s seen them go as high as $125.
A small newspaper struggling to survive
Beyond its status as a local newspaper, the Eagle is an endangered species.
It has resisted ownership by a large chain, which has often snubbed the media. The Eagle has been owned by the same family since 1903; Her patriarch, Vernon Wise, is now 95 years old.
Fifth-generation family member Jamie Wise Lanier drove up from Cincinnati this week to congratulate the staff on a job well done, said general manager Tammy Schuey.
Six issues are printed each week and a digital site has a paywall that was put down for some of the shooting stories. The Eagle’s circulation is 18,000, Schuey said, with about 3,000 of those digital.
The United States has lost a third of its newspapers since 2005 as the Internet chews up once-robust advertising revenue.
An average of 2.5 newspapers will close each week in 2023, according to a Northwestern University study. Most were in small communities like Butler.
The Eagle abandoned a newsroom across the city in 2019, consolidating space in the building that houses its printing press. It has diversified, starting a billboard company and taking on additional print jobs.
It even preserves the remains of a long-closed local circus and allows residents to visit.
The Eagle has about 30 employees, although it is now short two reporters and a photographer.
Cabinets of old photographs lie amid the clutter of desks in the newsroom, with a whiteboard listing which staff members will be on the weekend phones.
Her staff is a mix of youngsters like Bucur and Phillips, who tend to move on to bigger institutions, and those with roots at Butler.
Sybert has worked at Eagle since 1982. Schuey was originally hired in 1991 to teach the composing room staff how to use Macs.
“This is a challenging business,” Schuey said. “We’re not out of the woods yet.”
Local understanding makes a big difference
When a big story comes to town, with national and international reporters following it, the local news media is still a precious and precious resource.
The eagle knows the terrain. She knows the local officials.
Savvy national reporters who “parachute” into a small community that suddenly makes the news know to seek out local reporters. Some have made it to the Eagles, Schuey said.
Recognition helps in other ways. Bucur found people in the crowd who were suspicious of national reporters but answered her questions, and the same goes for some authorities. She tapped her network of Facebook friends to report for help.
Such a basic belief is common. Many people in small towns have more faith in their community newspapers, said Rick Edmonds, media business analyst at the Poynter Institute.
“It’s just nice to support the locals,” 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 covering it for their size.”
The Eagle has another advantage: It doesn’t go anywhere when the national journalists leave. The story will not end. Injured people must be healed and the investigation will determine who is responsible for a possible assassin who could hit Trump.
In short: responsible journalism as civic leadership in distressing moments.
“Our community went through a traumatic experience,” Schuey said. “I was there. We have some healing to do, and I think the newspaper is a critical part of helping lead the community through that.”
So, too, do the people in Eagle need to heal, as Phillips’ raw emotions attest. Management is trying to give staff members a few days off, possibly with the help of reporters in the surrounding communities.
Bucur said he would hate to see Butler turned into a political supporter, with the assassination being used as a kind of rallying cry. The division of national politics had already seeped into local meetings and staff members felt the tension.
Sybert and Schuey look at each other to try and remember what was the biggest story Butler Eagle reporters have worked on. Was it a tornado that killed nine in the 1980s? Any particularly bad traffic accidents? Trump made an uneventful campaign visit in 2020. But there’s no doubt what tops the list now.
Despite the stress of the assassination, covering it has been a personal revelation for the soft-spoken Beauty, who grew up 30 miles (48.2 kilometers) south in Pittsburgh and studied psychology in college. Her plans changed when she took a communications course and loved it.
“That,” she said, “was the moment I told myself I think I’m cut out for journalism.”
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