When the going gets tough, the journalists get busy.
These past few weeks have been as tough as it gets.
Covering this COVID-19 pandemic is likely the biggest story of all our careers. At times, it can feel overwhelming.
In its earliest days it felt like a perpetual treadmill as stories we filed in the morning needed to be updated in the afternoon because decisions had been reevaluated, plans hatched became plans scratched.
Staying on top of it all was complicated by being out of the office, where thoughts could be shared and ideas exchanged across the room. Our connections to the world, and to each other, came through email, texts, conference calls, social media and apps like Slack.
Keeping up with the flow of information, distilling it, getting more details, was exhausting.
But it’s what we do, why we all signed up for this gig where the financial rewards can be slim, security for at least the past decade has been precarious, and a true measure of your success is when everybody dislikes you.
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Every contribution also comes with an offer for a one-year digital subscription to the Globe and Mail for $1.99 (a savings of $130!), so you can get the big picture along with a glimpse of what’s happening just down the street.
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By the third day of that first full week it felt like we’d found our rhythm. It was possible to put some structure to the hours, anticipate the ebbs and flows of announcements, press releases and incoming emails with story tips.
Our focus from the outset was our website. As the story of this pandemic has been evolving and changing so quickly it was the only medium that could keep up.
And readers have been responding.
Last year, our parent company — Glacier Media — installed a big screen television in our newsroom so we could monitor in real time the performance of our websites, and the traffic generated by the stories they contain. Working from home, we can also check in through Google Analytics.
I’d be lying if I didn’t say it’s been gratifying and exciting to watch those stats rise steadily through the first two months of this year — thanks to a few stories that caught fire — and then explode in March.
That exponential growth tells us the stories we’re posting are connecting with readers, that the work we’re doing to focus the impacts of the global pandemic down to a local level is important.
But the core of our operation is still the newspaper that gets delivered to your doorstep or lobby every Thursday.
And it’s hurting.
Just how much hit us in the gut on Wednesday afternoon when we lost the longtime captain of our ship, editor Richard Dal Monte, and tenacious reporter Janis Cleugh, whose dedication to covering the arts community in the Tri-Cities remained steadfast even as all the arts were cancelled.
Colleagues and friends at other papers were also let go, as our company tries to reconcile a precipitous decline in advertising from local businesses that themselves are struggling with the important function we have to play in trying to help our communities navigate this difficult time.
Their loss will make it more challenging for the rest of us to keep up with this story. And there’s no guarantee the cuts won’t end there.
It’s easy to take the local paper for granted.
Just as we used to take the ease of shopping for groceries for granted, along with getting a haircut, going to a restaurant or the movies, enjoying an ice cream treat, heading to the gym.
The pandemic has snatched many of those mundane, day-to-day activities from us, altered others so they seem foreign, of a different time or place.
We adjust to the inconveniences and disruptions because we know they’re for our own safety and, ideally, their implementation will speed us back towards some semblance of normalcy sooner rather than later.
And when that normalcy comes, hopefully we’ll return to those easy routines with a new appreciation for how much such simplicities bring to our lives.
Some, though, won’t be able to weather this storm. Their departure will prolong the tumult and disorientation this pandemic has descended upon all of us, whether it’s the search for a new barber, the closure of a favourite restaurant, the scattering of a gym’s community.
The Tri-City News has been landing on your doorstep for more than 30 years. Whether you just pull out the flyers to plan future shopping excursions, or actually sit down to read the articles and look at the photos to gain a perspective on what is going on in your neighbourhood, the decisions that are being made that could affect your life and bank account, who and what fuels the community’s soul, we’re here for you.
Our mission isn’t just to inform you. We also hope we can make you smile, fire your passion, take action, prevent inaction, give you pause, make you proud and, most importantly, appreciate every aspect of the community around you.
Hopefully, one of those aspects is us.
