How a one-man news site beat the national media on a Trump shooting scoop
The Peninsula
John Paul Vranesevich, the owner and only full time reporter for the Beaver Countian, was reporting on a candlelight vigil for a slain teen in Mercer...
John Paul Vranesevich, the owner and only full-time reporter for the Beaver Countian, was reporting on a candlelight vigil for a slain teen in Mercer County, Pa., last Saturday when his phone started pinging with text messages.
A lone gunman on a roof had just fired toward Donald Trump at a rally in nearby Butler County, leaving the former president injured, a local man dead and serious concerns about security surrounding the event. People in law enforcement whom Vranesevich had come to know from a dozen years covering this corner of western Pennsylvania wanted the journalist to know what was happening.
"I was literally in the corner, going back and forth with my sources, who were giving me the play-by-play,” he recalled this week.
And he quickly realized that they were sharing details with him that had not yet been reported by national media.
Vranesevich silenced his phone, telling his contacts he’d get back to them, and kept covering the vigil. But by Monday afternoon, his follow-up reporting culminated in a major scoop: Local officers had actually been stationed inside the building the shooter climbed to fire his shots. And another officer had alerted a command center about the suspicious man before he even climbed the roof.
