Journalists share a kinship and a sense of mission. Today, we also share grief.

Wendi. John. Rebecca. Gerald. Robert.

I didn’t know any of these people, and yet the news of their horrific deaths this week left me and other journalists I know feeling unmoored — like we’d lost distant members of our family.

The truth is we did. Journalists share a kinship — a bond not unlike police officers, teachers or others who dedicate their lives to public service. And today we share a sadness akin to what those others have felt when one of their own was lost to senseless violence.

I’ve been working in local newsrooms like Annapolis’ Capital Gazette for nearly half my life. Big ones. Small ones. All of them filled with people like Wendi, John, Rebecca, Gerald and Robert.

People who work long hours and late nights. People who coach Little League Baseball and sing in the church choir. People who drive into the hurricanes and run toward the gunfire when the chaos and madness descend. People who come to work each day with one mission — to tell the stories that matter to the people in their communities.

And they do this at a time when the very existence of the work they do is threatened by a business model that is rapidly changing. None of us knows whether we will have a job next week or next month, but we stick with this because we believe it matters.

Journalists know what it feels like to deal with people who hate us simply because of what we do. We have heard the threats and have dealt with the online trolls and have all had to pause and think about how to answer the question, “So what do you do?”

I, myself, have had my tires slashed, my car keyed and have been called every name in the book. Even so, I’ve never truly felt unsafe. Unsettled maybe, but not unsafe. Until this week.

There have always been people who hate journalists, and it’s somewhat understandable. We tell stories that some people don’t want us to tell. We show up in people’s lives in the moments of their greatest anguish. We ask questions some people don’t want to answer.

But something seems to have fundamentally changed in recent years. The tone is sharper. It’s harder to engage people in a dialogue about issues or concerns. People want to lump us into this massive bucket called “the media.” Some even call us the “enemy.”

Wendi, John, Rebecca, Gerald and Robert weren’t enemies. They were people who came to work Thursday morning determined to produce a newspaper and online report that served their neighbors’ needs. And they were targeted and brutally gunned down — simply for doing their jobs.

Just moments after the shooting ended, their colleagues did what journalists do. They got to work telling the story of what happened in their community that day. They tried to make sense of a senseless act through their reporting and writing. And they will keep doing that in the days and weeks to come.

Don’t get me wrong. Journalists are not heroes. We make mistakes. Our best intentions backfire. We have inherent biases that creep into our work, despite our best efforts. In short, we’re human. And it is that humanity that drives us to keep doing this, in spite of the challenges.

We do this work because we believe it matters.

Robyn Tomlin is the executive editor of The News & Observer and The Herald-Sun and the regional editor of McClatchy’s NC/SC newspapers.

This story was originally published June 29, 2018 at 2:56 PM.