‘A particular responsibility’: What it was like to cover the 2015 Baltimore Uprising

“Everybody was all in.”

It’s a bit of a full circle moment to hear this statement come from my father 10 years after I witnessed him pulling up outside our house, looking dazed and half-asleep. I was eight years old and just getting ready to start the day; it was 8:30 am.

There was a reason for his all-nighter. He was a journalist, and Baltimore was reacting to the death of Freddie Gray.

This was the morning of April 28, 2015. My dad — Evan Serpick, then editor-in-chief of the Baltimore City Paper — and the staff of reporters, editors, fact-checkers, and designers had been working hard. They were primarily fueled by one commonality: a longing to understand the story, not simply to observe it.

Baltimore City Paper was a free, alternative weekly newspaper published here from 1977 to 2017. Following the tradition of alt-weeklies in cities around the country, the news outlet regularly featured in-depth news features, edgy arts and culture content, and a more opinionated style than the mainstream press. 

“I think we all felt a particular responsibility to try and do the story justice,” my dad says now. “We knew early on that this was an important story for Baltimore — particularly for Baltimore communities that weren’t often heard from — and we believed strongly that most other media outlets wouldn’t do it justice.”

Baynard Woods, City Paper’s managing editor at the time, remembers the first few days following Gray’s arrest: “I remember very well. We’d gone out to a protest one night before he died, but I remember the following Sunday, the 19th, when people called and told me that Freddie Gray had died of the injuries that the police gave. … And then we just went every day and then it got bigger and bigger and bigger.”

As the Uprising grew, distinctions between City Paper’s coverage and the Baltimore Sun’s coverage became apparent; while the City Paper tried to focus on the people’s story, the Sun focused on the police’s story.

Woods explains that “the Sun saw itself as a major institution in the city — and institutions favor institutions, so they were always going to trust the document more than a person, right? And police produce documents, whereas victims of police don’t produce documents. And so they are always going to trust the police more than they trust the victim of police… We felt like the Sun was embedded with the police and we were embedded with the community.”

The team worked to connect with the protesters, to understand their story. This attitude progressed to physical violence, when the police beat City Paper photo editor J.M. (Joe) Giordano. 

Woods recounts: “I was screaming ‘He’s a photographer, he’s a photographer,’ which I’m ashamed of now, because I don’t think the press deserves special First Amendment rights. Everyone has First Amendment rights and you shouldn’t be kicking anybody’s ass. But my loud voice, I think, did keep them from kicking Joe’s ass worse, so I’m glad I said something.”

Giordano, himself, explains the incident in a more untroubled manner: “I was doing my job. They were doing their job. I was photographing. They jumped on me. So … yeah.”

His sangfroid continues, “I didn’t have any head injuries. I had some, you know, like a lot of bruising on my arms and stuff but, because I was a military police in the army, I knew how to defend myself against batons.”

Baltimore journalist and author D. Watkins, who was a freelancer for a range of media outlets at the time, worked from the City Paper office during the Uprising. “What City Paper did was different,” he said. “They walked into the situation with an openness to consider how people in the community felt at that particular time. … I know for sure I saw Baynard and Joe at pretty much everything and I was like, wow … I just felt like I saw those guys at everything. I think Baynard might’ve let me hold his press pass or somebody’s press pass to be out past curfew and, you know, I took it.”

As the Uprising turned violent, on April 25 and 27, national media swarmed; they were not met warmly.

“Once the national press came in, they’re all surrounded by fucking bodyguards,” Woods says. “When you come in with bodyguards into the community, what the hell do you think is gonna happen? Do you think anyone’s going to trust you? It was somewhat disgusting to see all of that happen too.”

Charlie Herrick, City Paper’s web editor at the time, expands, “I remember hearing a lot of misinformation, especially on Fox News, how it’s like, ‘Oh, the city is in flames’ and blah, blah.”

He continues, “There were protests going on around City Hall and Fox News had come in and Geraldo Rivera was standing right there, talking to the camera about what’s going on and it’s, you know, bullshit. And of course, everyone’s standing around him yelling, ‘That’s not true,’ you know. It was just weird because he was trying his best to do whatever Fox wanted him to and you could tell he just wanted to get the hell out of there. It was like, ‘Wow, you’re really an on-the-ground reporter and just want to come in, say a bunch of bullshit and then get out.’”

The City Paper’s contrary attitude was not only a moral necessity. It allowed the team to tell a wildly different story, one that was closer to the truth.

Woods exemplifies, “Bloods were there and were escorting press, making sure people were staying safe. At some point, people came up to take mine and Joe’s phone and they were like, ‘No, no, they’re City Paper. It’s cool.’”

Remembering the City Paper’s approach, D. Watkins says, “I think they were some of the most passionate articles. I think they were some of the most meaningful articles. I think they were, truly. Yeah, you know, no one covered it better. I think they should’ve won awards for the coverage.”

In fact, the City Paper actually did win several awards from the MDDC Press Association, including the top prize — Best Of Show — for the staff’s stories on the death of Freddie Gray and the protests and trials that followed.

But City Paper staff are open about their limitations. The coverage made the City Paper’s lack of diversity exceedingly apparent.

Rebekah Kirkman, a City Paper editor at the time, says, “It’s not like [the lack of diversity] was unknown to us before all this happened, but it threw into sharp relief the limitations and what we can do or what perspectives we could provide.”

Lawrence Burney, a Black journalist who grew up in Baltimore and reported on the Uprising for City Paper and other media outlets, including Vice, was directly connected to communities affected by Freddie Gray’s death in ways the overwhelmingly white City Paper staff wasn’t. 

“I was kind of making my rounds just based off this local knowledge,” he says. “For instance, my stepfather has a shop on Monument Street. One day the riots were really popping off and me and my grandfather just rolled down to his store to make sure he was good because a lot of establishments were getting broken into and looted. While that was happening, we saw a church on fire in East Baltimore and we couldn’t even turn onto his street on foot because there was a literal line of cops and military gear. We had to essentially ask for their permission to walk down the street that I walked down so many times in my life. … I was more driven by how it affected people in my life, personally.”

He adds, “Just being a Black person that grew up in the city, in this country, given the history of police and any authority figure under a white power structure, that’s all the urgency I really needed.”

While acknowledging their limitations, the City Paper staff remains proud of its coverage: “The work is important,” Giordano says. “I feel that being on the ground, being accepted in those spaces, it really made for good storytelling.”

My dad expands, “The City Paper provided an alternative to the mainstream media that was really focused on institutions. Though we were limited by the lack of diversity, we were much more focused on representing the community than other local or national media.”

Characterizing the City Paper, Woods states, “Some people would write letters and complain, saying ‘you guys suck because of this’ or ‘you guys suck because of that.’ But however much we sucked, and we did, we weren’t a suck-up.” 

Just like myself, Kirkman and Woods remember the morning of the 28th, after the City Paper staff had stayed up all night to meet its deadline.

“It was really surreal, walking out of the building at seven in the morning after we’d finished the paper,” says Kirkman. “Your dad drove me and my roommate home and it was a quiet morning in Charles Village, you know, the day after all that had happened and after I’m like reading through all these stories from our reporters on the ground in West Baltimore and around downtown, talking about what’s going on. It was really strange, actually, to go back to my own neighborhood and see how nothing had changed.”

But the quiet wouldn’t last. The National Guard and the national media had descended on Baltimore and City Paper staff would soon be back at work.

“As we’re putting the paper to bed, looking out the windows, the sun is rising and all the national guard trucks started rolling in,” Woods recalls. “So then it was like, okay, no sleep again. We walked out and I had to go do an interview with someone for TV or radio or HuffPost or something pretty much right when I got home. Then I think I napped for maybe 30 minutes and then was back on the street for the rest of the day.”

(Note: The Baltimore Sun, which bought City Paper in 2014 and shut it down in 2017, has removed much of City Paper’s Freddie Gray coverage from its website, but many stories are accessible via archive websites like the Wayback Machine.)

Jack Serpick is a senior in high school at the Baltimore Polytechnic Institute, where he plays tennis and is a founder of the Jewish Student Union. He grew up in Baltimore and is interested in music, politics, and culture. He will be studying at Columbia University this fall.