EDITOR'S NOTE: In February 2020 I began a new venture writing a blog for "News and Tech" magazine, an magazine devoted to the newspaper industry. The blog appears on the site's homepage. This column originally appeared March 19, 2020.
Newsrooms big and small are in the throes of covering a pandemic.
This arguably is the biggest news event in a generation, going all the way back to 9/11.
Editors are having to make difficult decisions about where and how to staff reporters. Reporters are having to make decisions about how to best get the story when travel and access are being severely limited.
Meanwhile, publishers and other managers are busy trying to figure out how to keep publishing a newspaper.
And if you're a publisher, editor and reporter all rolled into one, your job is even more challenging right now. … After all, the smaller the publication, the more difficult your choices about where to spend your time.
But in the midst of all of this, do not forget one vital play in your crisis coverage playbook. … (And for you publishers, this goes for your crisis operational management, as well!)
Please remember: Do not forget to talk to your audience! … Whether that be in an editor’s -- or publisher’s -- column in your printed newspaper, periodic posts online talking directly to your digital readers or even in live fashion on some digital platform.
For instance, as I write this column, I currently have up on a second computer monitor a “live chat” between The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead Editor Matt Von Pinnon and the paper’s readers. The paper is headquartered in Fargo, N.D.
Von Pinnon is using the Scribble Live platform to literally live blog in real time with The Forum’s readers. He’s taking questions as they come, discussing their coverage of the coronavirus and also taking suggestions for story ideas or things that his newsroom might be neglecting to think about during this crisis.
It is a terrific outreach effort that is realizing returns beyond any planned marketing that the newspaper could have ever engineered. In fact, the planned hour-long chat was so effective, that they extended it to a 90-minute chat.
But Scribble isn’t the only platform to think about. There are a myriad of tools out there that you can consider, including producing your own video. Chat with your publishing colleagues with whom you often confer. I’ll guarantee you that there are some news operations out there that are really good at this kind of effort.
Direct communication with your audience, and thus your community, is important at any point in the year, but in this moment of general anxiousness, it is critical!
This is your opportunity to remind the community who it is that covers all of the important news in their lives.
This is your opportunity to reassert the importance of a local community newspaper.
This is your opportunity to remind readers -- whether print or digital -- that it is you who they turn to in a crisis situation, not social media platforms.
You have a lot to think about right now. … Your time -- and your staff’s time, if you have one -- is limited. And it’s being divided in a number of ways. … But please do not forget to build in time to have a direct, transparent and ongoing conversation with your audience. It will pay dividends in more ways than you can imagine!
Good luck to all of the publications out there managing your way through this unprecedented time. … Stay healthy! Stay safe! … We need you now more than ever!
Devlyn Brooks is president of Modulist, a media services company specializing in the processing of user-generated paid content submissions for newspapers. Devlyn spent 20 years writing and editing in newsrooms big and small, dailies and weeklies.
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