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It comes with the territory. Anyone working in any medium of journalism understands from the outset that there will be those who find their reasons — regardless of legitimacy — to disapprove of the way we do our jobs.

We see that in Letters to the Editor, phone calls, emails and social media posts. Freedom of speech and freedom of the press, after all, are next-door neighbors in the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States.

But, as we have seen across the country in recent years, the press has come under attack in more aggressive, and sometimes more violent, ways. How disapproval manifests itself has crossed that invisible line from protest to threat.

It happened in our neck of the woods recently at the Grants Pass Daily Courier — where a brick, upon which was written a vulgar message and a reporter’s name, was thrown through a glass window into the lobby of the paper’s building.

“It’s a sad commentary on the current state of American society,” Editor Scott Stoddard said in the Daily Courier’s story on the incident, “when people respond to the written word with acts of vandalism and violence.”

Stoddard went on to say that the paper was “not going to be silenced” by those responsible for the brick-throwing attack.

To which we say to those at the Daily Courier … we’ve got your back.

When the Mail Tribune went under nearly a year ago, the Daily Courier stepped up its coverage and staff to help fill the coverage gap, simultaneous to the Rogue Valley Times launching as well.

This was a good thing, particularly for those who want to know what is happening in Southern Oregon.

More news, professionally reported and presented, is better than less — and far better than the void left behind by the end of the Mail Tribune.

In the year since, the Times and the Daily Courier have often covered some of the same stories. Reporters who worked at the Mail Tribune went to work in Grants Pass, and some who worked at the Daily Courier have found their way to the Times.

It is the nature of the business.

Regardless, however, of how the public or the papers themselves view this expansion of news coverage, there is one fundamental truth:

The attack on the Daily Courier’s office — particularly in how it targeted an individual reporter — went far beyond the bounds of legitimate disapproval.

That type of action does not, and should not, come with the territory.

It is, though, becoming more prevalent. According to the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, there have been more than two-dozen incidents of varying degrees registered nationwide this year.

That might not seem like a lot … until it hits close to home.