Seeing Emotion: Through the Lens of Karen Fucito

Seeing Emotion: Through the Lens of Karen Fucito
By Laura Lynn Miller

Karen Fucito remembers the chaos that erupted on the sidewalk outside the Sussex County Courthouse one morning in March of 1989.

In the midst of it all, Fucito aimed at the prosecution’s star witness, who was walking down the sidewalk, and took her shot.

When it was all over, the picture Fucito took was on the front page of the newspaper the next day.

As a young photojournalist working with the Daily Record in Morris County, N.J. at the time, Fucito wondered if she had done the right thing in taking the photo.

“Did I do my job with what I had to work with?” Fucito asked, “Did I do the right thing?”

Almost 20 years later, Fucito asked those same, two questions to a small class of journalism undergraduates at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J.

On Feb. 10, Professor Bruce Reynolds invited the 48-year-old photojournalist and former photo editor to speak to his class about her career in journalism.

Dressed in a brown vest and cargo pants with enough pockets to hold a dozen rolls of film, Fucito held up several photographs she and her colleagues took.

Fucito then held a mock photo editor’s meeting, asking the students what pictures they thought ran in the Daily Record.

According to Fucito, a photojournalist must be objective when deciding what photos should run in the newspaper, as well as ethical in their judgment.

Despite how a photojournalist may feel, all sides of a story must be reported, as to only report the optimistic side of a story is to shield readers from another side of the truth, Fucito said.

“We have to be objective,” Fucito said. “You’ve got to decide who you are making the decision for, and you’ve got to make the right decision.”

Fucito passed around photos among the class.

One of the photos showed a distraught field hockey player after losing a championship game and another showed a teenage girl being rescued from an overpass.

Fucito then described how that one photo she took at the Sussex County Courthouse became the most memorable story she ever covered in her 20 years with the Daily Record.

According to Fucito, on Feb. 12, 1989, a teenager was murdered and another kidnapped during a party in Sparta, N.J.

Anthony Pompelio, a 17-year-old Sparta High School student heard fellow schoolmate, 17-year-old Donna Shaban’s cry for help during the party, Fucito said.

When Pompelio came to her aid, Shaban’s 19-year-old ex-boyfriend, Mike Ardila stabbed Pompelio repeatedly with a hunting knife and kidnapped Shaban, Fucito said.

After stealing Pompelio’s Jeep Cherokee, Ardila fled the state on a three-day, cross-country drive, Fucito said.

According to The New York Times, Ardila led police on a high-speed chase through the Nevada desert before losing control of the vehicle, flipping it over.

Ardila suffered only minor injuries and was taken into custody in Las Vegas, N.M., The New York Times said.

Shaban was found in Groom, TX by a passing trucker, after he saw her being pushed out of the Jeep Cherokee by Ardila, The New York Times said.

Pompelio’s father, Attorney Richard Pompelio petitioned to keep cameras out of the courtroom during Ardila’s trial because the prosecution’s star witness, Shaban, was a minor, Fuctio said.

The petition was granted, despite protests from The Star-Ledger, The New York Times and the Daily Record, Fucito said.

Every day, Fucito waited outside with other reporters to catch a glimpse of Shaban until finally that one March morning, she came to give her testimony, Fucito said.

“We had to illustrate the story that day,” Fucito said. “Despite how that makes me feel, that is my job.”

Although being crowded among several reporters, Fucito got a picture of the scared, blonde-haired Shaban as she was being escorted to the courthouse.

The Daily Record ran the picture the next day, Fucito said.

According to Fucito, though, the best aspect about her involvement in the case was that at the end, she got to know everybody during the trial, like Pompelio’s family.

When Ardila was found guilty, Richard Pompelio and his ex-wife tearfully hugged each other outside of the courthouse, relieved about the verdict in their son’s murder.

“When I saw Richard’s ex-wife put her head on his shoulder, I took my shot,” Fucito said.
“We ran the picture, and I had no problems because I had been there for so long.”

After listening to Fucito, Rutgers University senior, Alex Napoliello agreed with her about the importance of a photo and how it affects a story.

“A photo can capture emotions and show how important a reader’s view of a story can changed based on the photo that goes along with it,” Napoliello said. “It’s not words describing events, it’s seeing what’s going on.”

Professor Bruce Reynolds also pointed out the importance of how a photo portrays emotion and illustrates a story for the reader.

“Karen's greatest asset in my estimation is her ability to find emotion where it exists,” Reynolds said. “Morris County is largely white and also largely devoid of emotion, but she finds it, even while standing relatively far away, with her long lenses.”

Fucito retired from the Daily Record in 2004.

Due to the rise of online media, when asked how she would feel if newspapers like the Daily Record disappeared, Fucito explained that it would be it would be loss of a great tradition.

In 2005, Fucito found one way to support the future of newspapers by teaching print journalism to children, she said.

Fucito is the co-founder of Making Headlines LLC, a company that provides workshops to educate elementary, middle and high school students about journalism.

In these workshops, students learn the basics of conducting interviews as well as how to write news stories, which are made into a whole newspaper by the end of the workshop.

“Newspapers is something I hate to see go away,” Fucito said. “That's why it is up to them to keep them from going away.”

© Laura Lynn Miller Productions