Vulnerable. Reporters are vulnerable. The camera lens and a notepad do not stop bullets. It was the first lesson I learned, inadvertently of course, when I started to work as a newspaper reporter, two decades ago.

By now, the entire country knows what happened today in southern Virginia. In an on-air moment that reads like the script treatment for a prime-time television crime show, a disgruntled former on-air personality barged into live coverage of a minor news story (an anniversary somewhere, a chamber of commerce-type story) that was being broadcast on the local station’s morning news show and shot and killed the on-air reporter and her cameraman and injured the woman being interviewed. From his position on the ground, the fallen cameraman turned his camera to face the shooter, and the image he broadcast made the shooter’s face known; it may be that the mortally injured cameraman’s last living act was one more report from the scene. Morning show viewers saw it live.

In the studio, the broadcast news staff of WDBJ7, a CBS affiliate, watched powerlessly and yet picked up the story, which now had three victims. In shock, they carried on. I watched for about an hour at noon and everyone there was doing amazing work. There will be a news conference at 2:00 p.m.

The reporter was named Alison Parker; she was 24 years old and had recently gotten engaged to be married to another young WDBJ reporter. The cameraman, Adam Ward, was 27. He was engaged to be married as well and today was to be his last day at WDBJ; his fiancee was in the production studio doing her job when she watched her boyfriend get shot.

It is with extreme sadness that we report WDBJ7's Alison Parker and Adam Ward were killed in an attack this morning. http://t.co/oC9s4vLJXV

— WDBJ7 (@WDBJ7) August 26, 2015

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