Death of two local journalists

This story strikes me harder than most of the many stories along the lines, "idiots kill innocent people" with which newspapers, TV news, and the internet sites dedicated to such stuff are always crowded.

Alison Parker and Adam Ward died Wednesday morning, August 26, covering a story. Not a BIG story. Nothing involving ISIS or extreme volatility on the world's stock markets or exposing corruption or fraud. No, these two young journalists at Roanoke Virginia's teevee station WDBJ were doing what it is fair to call a routine interview with a woman on a local Chamber of Commerce (the Smith Mountain Lake Regional Chamber of Commerce) about lake-front tourism.

Journalists sometimes do die covering the Big stories. The guys at the Charlie Hebdo office in Paris were killed for their satiric take on contemporary Islamofascism, as big a story as there is. But this? It reminds me of the way Alexander Hamilton died, not for any reason connected to his political or financial genius and achievements but just because he couldn't find a better way out of a personal mutual grievance with Aaron Burr. History's joking anti-climaxes.

Parker and Ward, RIP.

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