Say a prayer for my friend and his family

Joe Killian and his grandfather, Kenneth Rose, Sr.

My friend Joe Killian, a Bristol Eastern High School graduate and a brilliant writer, is waiting for news today after a 44-foot commercial boat sank last night off Cape May, New Jersey. Three men are missing in terrible conditions, including his beloved grandfather, Kenneth Rose, Sr, and an uncle. The Coast Guard is searching for the missing men, but so far all that's turned up is an empty life boat and some debris.

Please keep Joe and his family in your prayers.

My wife, Jackie, took this picture of Joe and his grandfather this summer at the North Carolina wedding of Joe and another of our closest friends, Amanda Lehmert, another great reporter and a Bristol Central High School graduate.

You can read about the missing fishing boat in the Cape May County Herald and the Philadelphia Inquirer, among other newspapers. Here is the Associated Press account.

Update at 7:25 p.m. -- The Coast Guard has suspended its search, the Associated Press reports. It has no plans to renew the search tomorrow. So fading hopes turn toward what comes next. I've talked to Joe and Amanda, who are on their way to his mother's house on the North Carolina shore. They are doing about as well as can be expected in such times. Joe told me he appreciated all the kind words he received today.

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Copyright 2009. All rights reserved.
Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com

Former Bristol reporter attacked at Palin rally

A former reporter from Bristol is perhaps the first member of the press to be assaulted at a presidential campaign rally this year.
While covering a Thursday rally for Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin in North Carolina, Joe Killian was knocked “sprawling onto the ground” by a “big fat guy with a brown beard” wearing a GOP campaign shirt and hat.
Killian, 26, said Friday that his leg “is a little black and blue” from the assault, “but mostly just my pride is injured.”
The attack on Killian, a Greensboro News-Record reporter who graduated from Bristol Eastern High School eight years ago and wrote for The Bristol Press and The Tattoo teen newspaper under the name Joe Wilbur, became a major issue among bloggers and political junkies Friday as they debated whether the Republican campaign’s slurs on the media contributed to the assault.
Killian said that becoming known as “the guy who couldn’t stay on his feet at the Palin rally is not the kind of fame you want to achieve.”
Killian wrote on his blog that the attack occurred shortly after the end of a Palin rally at Elon University while he was attempting to interview some supporters of Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama who had been ousted from the event.
As Killian tried to interview them, an unidentified Palin backer began to yell at the Obama loyalists. The man made his disgust clear for the media clear and ultimately, as Killian explained, “kicked the back of my leg, buckling my right knee and sending me sprawling onto the ground.”
By the time he could get up and find a police officer, the man was gone, he said.
Killian said he suspects other reporters have similar things happen at political rallies this year, but because they never wrote about, nobody knows.
“The fact that I blogged about it is what made it a big deal,” Killian said.
He said that “weird and dangerous stuff happens to reporters” all the time because they go places where people who are “really passionate about something” gather.
Killian, who’s been a reporter for a decade and has been on the Greensboro newspaper’s staff for two years, said that he has felt “this could end badly for me” on a number of occasions, including violent anti-war protests.
He said that after heading into the middle of housing projects to talk to violent gang members and rallies from the left and right where violence was possible, it’s ironic “this is the first time I have been roughed up by anybody.”
“In a way, I’ve been lucky so far,” Killian said. “It was just my turn, apparently.”
While many bloggers have lined up to defend Killian, others have questioned his story and accused him of liberal bias.

Here is Killian's account.

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Copyright 2008. All rights reserved.
Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com

Former Bristol reporter assaulted at a Palin rally

Update: Be sure to read this piece, which includes Joe's reaction to the assault.

A Bristol Eastern High School graduate who ignored my advice and went into journalism got his ass kicked for it yesterday.

Joe (Wilbur) Killian, a former writer for The Bristol Press and The Tattoo, is a reporter in Greensboro, N.C., where he got assigned to cover yesterday's rally by Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.

At the rally, Joe tried to speak with some Obama supporters who were kicked out -- and then got assaulted for it by an angry Republican.

Read his account of what happened here.

Joe's been a friend since he was in high school so I've followed his career pretty closely. He won lots of awards for his work for The Tattoo, the international teen-written newspaper that my wife and I run.

He was briefly a staff writer at the Press, ran his college's newspaper and has worked for the Greensboro News & Record for a couple of years now. He's a great guy and a terrific journalist.

There's something terribly wrong with our politics when some angry fat guy could assault Joe for doing his job. I hope it makes everyone step back and think about where this fury might take us.

Meanwhile, I hope Joe's OK. I know he's black and blue.

You can read commentary about the assault all over the internet today, but I'll post a few links in a bit.

Here are a few:

Greensboro reporter Mark Binker's Capital Beat blog

Daily Kos

Minnesota Independent

Chris Lowrance's blog

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Copyright 2008. All rights reserved.
Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com