The metaphor “like drinking from a fire hose” applies here.
Covering the slowly unfolding COVID-19 crisis has been a monumental challenge. No event in our lifetimes has resulted in as much upheaval. None has been as universally threatening to our collective well-being. None has deeply affected every single person who is reading this. We would have to go back to World War II to find this much disruption and single-minded national focus on a crisis.
Since March 13, when COVID-19 came home to Hancock County with a report that a jailer had tested positive and school superintendents began to call off classes before spring break, the Daily Reporter has published upwards of 100 stories about the outbreak. COVID-19 has dominated Page One like no story in decades. Every centerpiece story for the past six weeks – 32 editions in a row and counting as of today – has featured coverage of how Hancock County has responded to the pandemic.
Every day has brought a new challenge in dealing with an increasingly complex, ever-changing event. As you may have noticed, a chunk of our reporting is influenced by the daily posting of COVID-19 statistics, the grim box score of new cases, deaths and tests administered. Once the state health department’s dashboard was up and running, Mitchell Kirk, who has been our lead reporter on the pandemic, took charge of parsing the daily numbers and assessing reaction from the Hancock County Health Department and experts at Hancock Regional Hospital.
That task has been difficult and frustrating, in part because of the caveats associated with the disturbingly low number of tests that have actually been administered here. Early on, I asked Steve Long, the CEO of HRH, if we were paying too much attention to the daily stats. He pointed out that those figures were – and are – the only metric we have to go on. So, as imperfect as it is, Mitch is including them in his daily reporting.
The fact is, we don’t really know how many people here have been exposed to COVID-19. That is maddening for our newsroom, just as it is for the medical staff at HRH and the hard-working staff at the Hancock County Health Department.
Speaking of our newsroom, it now exists only in concept. Our entire staff began working remotely even before Gov. Eric Holcomb issued his stay-at-home order. We have sharpened that capability over the years as a way of working more efficiently, and it has been a godsend the past six weeks. I am in touch with each of our reporters every day before 10 a.m. (most days, anyway) to go over what they’re working on and to be sure they’re staying safe.
We mostly do our reporting by phone, which hasn’t been ideal on some stories. But we are committed to making sure our employees minimize their physical contact with others. One person, however, doesn’t have the luxury of working by phone: Tom Russo, our intrepid photographer, who continues to make photographs – always from a safe distance – of the moments that are defining this age.
Tom and I talk every morning about his assignments, and he has the latitude to refuse any he thinks would put him in harm’s way. He wears a mask and gloves on most trips, depending on where he’ll be, and he works out his approach well before he arrives at the shoot. On the day he photographed two victims who had recently recovered from COVID-19, he stood in their driveways and photographed them from 15 feet away. Before he went to photograph operators of the hospital’s COVID-19 hotline for a story that ran last weekend, we consulted with Jenn Cox, the Hancock Health director of marketing, on how to safely approach the story. On other hospital-related stories, Cox has sent us photos shot by HRH because of restrictions on movement inside its facilities.
On such a far-reaching story, we have concentrated on telling those stories you won’t hear anywhere else. That’s our approach all the time, of course, but it’s been especially true at a time when we are being bombarded 24/7 by COVID-19 content from websites, social media, network news and cable talk shows. Learn what you can about the national situation elsewhere, then turn to us for information on how the situation is playing out here.
From the upcoming election and how voter outreach has been affected to a slimmed-down county fair, every aspect of life in Hancock County is being altered. We will continue to do our best to tell you about all of it.
As always, thanks for reading us.
David Hill is editor of the Daily Reporter. He welcomes your comments on this and any other story. You can email him at [email protected]
