Wisconsin Examiner: COVID-19 pandemic is raising the threat level for news outlets

For journalism outlets in Wisconsin and nationwide, the COVID-19 pandemic could be the biggest story ever. And reporters and editors are covering it even as their future has never looked more precarious.

News organizations have sent employees to work from home, some even before Gov. Tony Evers issued the Safer at Home order on March 25 to stop people from congregating. They hold staff meetings on video chat platforms and conduct interviews that way or by phone.

Pinched by a sharp drop in advertising, some have trimmed their content or downsized publication schedules. And some have also declared temporary employee furloughs or imposed salary cuts to hold down costs.

What the future will look like when the current crisis abates is anybody’s guess.

Through it all, however, news staffs that must do more with fewer people are scrambling to find and tell stories about the pandemic.

“One of the great ironies of all this is, on the one hand it feels like nobody is driving around, we’re all hunkered down, there is no sports — it feels like it would be a very, very slow time,” says John Smalley, editor at the Wisconsin State Journal. But, he says, “our reporters have never been busier.”

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