By Bill Simons
As an undergraduate at Colby College in Waterville, ME, I attended on-campus Lovejoy Convocation ceremonies where annually a journalist, invariably well-known and impactful, was honored for excellence in craft and professional courage. Following the award ceremony, the recipient would deliver an address. During my sophomore year in 1968, Carl Rowan, then a syndicated columnist who wrote extensively about the Civil Rights Movement and had previously broken a color barrier as the first Black to serve on the National Security Council, received the Lovejoy award. In his speech, Rowan both thanked and challenged the audience: “I ask, what Black journalist of any era could be but honored to receive an award in the name of one who gave his life in defense of his belief that slavery was immoral – and in defense of this belief that he had the right to publish his views… As we look at a nation still bitterly divided over race, still shamed from time to time by ugly aberrations of violence, would Lovejoy view us as immensely more enlightened than the Americans of his day?”
After graduating Colby, Rowan’s question and Lovejoy’s legacy continued to follow me. As part of my master of arts program in history at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, I studied under Leonard Richards, who had recently published “Gentlemen of Property and Standing: Anti-Abolition Mobs in Jacksonian America.” From Richards, I developed a more granular knowledge of Elijah Parish Lovejoy.
An 1826 graduate of Waterville College, subsequently renamed Colby College, Lovejoy, initially immersed in theology, evolved into an abolitionist newspaper editor. Rejecting gradualism and colonization, he encountered threats and violent opposition in both St. Louis, MO, and Alton, IL, for his uncompromising demand for the immediate abolition of slavery. After mobs destroyed his printing press three times, Lovejoy and his supporters resolved to continue publication. On November 7, 1837, the mob returned, torched the building domiciling the new press and shot Lovejoy dead as he attempted to save it. Outraged by the lawless assault, a young lawyer named Abraham Lincoln addressed the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield, IL, on January 27, 1838: “[T]he operation of this mobocratic spirit…is now abroad in the land… throw printing presses… shoot editors and… this Government cannot last.”
In 2023, the Lovejoy award went to Evan Gershkovich, a graduate of Bowdin (2014), a Maine college about 45 miles south of Colby. This precluded a speech by the recipient, then incarcerated in a Russian prison. “There rarely is a clear choice among selection committee members for the Lovejoy because we are fortunate to have so many journalists willing to put their lives and crawlers on the line for our indispensable craft,” said David Shribman, executive editor emeritus of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and former chair of the Lovejoy Selection Committee. “But Evan’s courage and his character are special even among those many courageous journalists.” Martin Kaiser, the current Lovejoy Selection Committee chair, also shared with me information about the award, which ratcheted attention to Gershkovich’s plight at a time when his fate remained uncertain.
A Jewish dimension threads through the Gershkovich story. Vladimir Putin, like Soviet and Russian autocrats before him, finds antisemitism a tool for redirecting discontent with government. Both of Gershkovich’s parents were among the Jewish emigres who fled repression in the Soviet Union and found refuge in America. Beyond family and history, the ethnic connection features the prominence of Jews in the fight for Gershkovich’s release. Through letters, petitions, lobbying, demonstrations and publicity, Jews, starting with Secretary of State Antony Blinken, were central to Gershkovich’s cause. A massive advocacy campaign commenced on Rosh Hashanah 2023, and many Jewish families left an empty seat for Gershkovich at the Passover 2023 seder table.
Growing up in a Russian-speaking home, Gershkovich developed a fascination with the language, history and culture of his ancestral home, albeit certainly no affinity for its government. Already an experienced reporter by his early 30s, Gershkovich found satisfaction in traveling, observing and meeting diverse people on assignment in Russia for The Wall Street Journal. From medical students to punk band musicians, his contacts were diverse. With the Russian invasion of Ukraine and Putin’s tolerance for no narrative but his own, foreign journalists increasingly departed and domestic media genuflected before the official line. Gershkovich understood the danger, but chose to remain in Russia to document the realities of wounded soldiers, food shortages and rising discontent. In a collaborative article, Gershkovich pierced Putin’s claims of success: “Shortages of artillery shells are hampering Russia’s grinding advance in eastern Ukraine.” Under Putin, unbiased reporting constitutes an offense against the state. On March 29, 2023, Gershkovich, despite his legal status as an accredited journalist, became the first American reporter arrested since the fall of the Soviet Union.
A fallacious charge of espionage was lodged against Gershkovich. In addition to demonstrating the cost of dissent from the official state narrative, Putin may have also ordered the arrest to gain a pawn for a future prisoner exchange. Protesting Gershkovich’s wrongful detention, President Joe Biden asserted, “Journalism is not a crime, and Evan went to Russia to do his job as a reporter – risking his safety to shine the light of truth on Russia’s brutal aggression against Ukraine.”
On June 26, 2024, Gershkovich’s secret trial commenced, resulting in a 16-year sentence. Under brutal conditions entailing 23 hours a day in solitary confinement, Gershkovich was incarcerated in Moscow’s notorious Lefortovo Prison. Neither journalist Viktoria Roshchyna nor dissident Alexei Navalny survived Putin’s gulag.
On August 1, 2024, a complex, multination prisoner exchange involving a Russian hitman secured Gershkovich’s release. Physical changes and the pain evident in his face suggest that Gershkovich’s ordeal is not over.
Throughout American history, principled journalists have faced reprisals, dangers and death.
Intimidating libel lawsuits against media by incoming president Donald Trump are meant to silence critics. The proliferation of unhinged social media and the demise of print newspapers pose unprecedented challenges to journalistic legitimacy, factors not unrelated to the resurgence of antisemitism and demonization of Israel. To preserve the legacy of Lovejoy and Gershkovich, it is well to keep in mind the words of Thomas Jefferson: “[W]ere it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”