On June 28, five people were killed in a shooting inside the newsroom of the Annapolis Capital Gazette. As my phone vibrated, I went a little numb. My family owned the Capital for nearly 40 years, from 1968 to 2007. The place is burned deep in my heart.
My father, Phil Merrill, bought the paper three months before I was born. By age five, I’d started the presses more times than I can remember. A backlit green button was situated on a big panel. When I was very small, someone had to put his thumb on top of mine to help me hold it down. The presses roared to life, and the colossal machine slowly ground faster and faster. I invariably came home covered in ink. In middle school, I worked at the paper selling classifieds, and as a teen I spent two years as a photojournalist, shooting mostly high-school sports. Every day, I thought: “I get paid for this?” I learned photography, but even more than that, I learned how to walk up to strangers and find out how they were part of Annapolis’s story.
Anyone who has grown up in a small town or city can understand the power of the local newspaper. In Maryland’s capital, nine out of ten homes subscribed. If the paper screwed something up, such as who’d scored a winning lacrosse goal, I heard about it in school. If there was an op-ed about a tightly contested political election, I heard about it at home. If the sports columnist beat up on the Orioles, we’d be stopped on the street by someone complaining, “How dare you criticize Cal Ripken?” The paper and our lives were intertwined.
My brother and sister and I spent countless hours at the original location on West Street—a former bowling alley, with some of the original wooden lanes in my dad’s office. I’m not sure if OSHA laws weren’t as strict or if Dad just ignored them, but he let us have the run of the place. We were mostly drawn to the presses—the size of eight tractor-trailers, with five-foot-wide reams of paper and giant barrels of ink. They were so loud, they shook the building. The pressmen were kind and made us hats out of newspapers, or we might be allowed to pull a copy off the line as they came out. I see this in movies often, including The Post, but let me tell you, it isn’t easy to do without jamming the presses.
I believe the Capital has made a huge difference to the Annapolis community. Editorials have always helped balance the need for development with the importance of historic preservation, or for protecting the Chesapeake while allowing for its multiple uses. It has endorsed politicians from sheriff to judges to register of wills, and—something my family cared deeply about—advocated for the University of Maryland. All things it still does, and does well.
Over the past decade, the paper’s ownership, leadership, and location changed. It stopped printing on-site and moved near Annapolis Mall. Because I’d been away from its daily life so long, the hours after the tragedy were hard to process. I wondered if anyone I knew still worked there and was in the building (yes); if there was anything my family, as former owners, could immediately do (not much); and, most important, how my dad would have reacted. Then I saw a tweet from reporter Chase Cook: “I can tell you this: We are putting out a damn paper tomorrow.” I don’t know if he knew my father, but I’m certain those would have been Dad’s exact words. Mr. Cook’s statement flooded my siblings and me with pride, as it showed us that the paper still has the same commitment to journalistic integrity it had when our parents led it.
The shooting happened just after 2:30 pm on a Thursday. Friday morning at 6, I went to a Safeway in Annapolis, and on the newsstand—a true testament to ink-stained journalists everywhere—was the Capital.
This article appears in the August 2018 issue Washingtonian.
Since 2006, Catherine Merrill has served as CEO and Owner of Washingtonian Media, parent company of the flagship Washingtonian—the capital region’s leading magazine for nearly six decades, with more than 400,000 readers and five National Magazine Awards. She also oversees Washingtonian.com, which attracts over 3 million monthly page views, and the brand’s social platforms, reaching more than one million followers. Under her leadership, the company has expanded with Washingtonian Weddings, the Washingtonian Welcome Guide, Washingtonian Events—producer of nationally recognized, award-winning events—and Washingtonian Custom Media, a full-service content marketing agency. She is proud to be certified as a women-owned small business.
From 2002 to 2007, Ms. Merrill served as Director of Operations for Affiliated Computer Services (ACS), where she helped manage and collect 60 percent of the nation’s tolls—$2.7 billion a year—including the majority of the E-ZPass network. From 1995 to 2002, she was a partner in the worldwide management consulting firm Oliver Wyman.
Ms. Merrill is deeply engaged in the community and currently serves on the boards of Cornell University; Ford’s Theatre; the Board of Visitors for the School of Journalism at the University of Maryland, College Park; Cornell University’s College of Arts and Sciences; and The Merrill Family Foundation. She is a founding member and serves on the Board of Advisors of the Fallen Journalists Memorial Foundation, and sits on the National Advisory Council for the Trust for the National Mall.Her past board service includes roles as a trustee of the University of Maryland, College Park; the City and Regional Magazine Association; and the Greater Washington Board of Trade.
Ms. Merrill is a member and former chapter chair of the Young Presidents’ Organization (YPO), and remains active in the Economic Club of Washington and the Federal City Council.
Her media appearances include CNN, the Today show, FOX, MSNBC, and various Washington, D.C. area news outlets.
