In Salt Lake City, Utah, last week, Enrique Limón was the only staffer left working in the building of the Salt Lake City Weekly. Between furloughs and staff working remotely, “I’m the lone editorial staffer in the building, and I’d been without a staff writer for a few months before the pandemic kicked into high gear, so it’s been quite the load to bear,” he told me.

As the coronavirus changed everything about how she worked and furloughs hit the company she works for, Megan Finnerty told me about pivoting to live storytelling online. “It is a blessing to be useful,” she said.

Pat Furgurson took a buyout from the Capital Gazette in Annapolis, Maryland, and still sent in story tips to his colleague, Selene San Felice. “Miss y’all. Stay safe,” he texted her. “#PressOn.”

In New Jersey, Lindy Washburn used a career as a beat reporter and vivid storytelling to bring people inside the hospital next to a crisis care nurse treating people with COVID-19. After learning of furloughs at her company, she worried about her work. “How can we stop reporting this? I just don’t know.”

In San Antonio, photojournalist Lola Gomez made a video from inside her hospital room as she recovered from COVID-19. “If you don’t believe in news, please believe in people that are sharing their stories out there.”

Kelsey Ryan launched a new site early in Kansas City and is helping newsrooms there work together. “If there’s something that we can do to help others, we want to do that.”

And from makeshift home bureaus, student journalists Sydney Hoover, Lucie Krisman and Cami Koons are still covering Eudora, Kansas, for that town’s only dedicated newsroom. “I am constantly sending them stories and pushing them to cover this community, and they are stepping up,” said their editor, Teri Finneman. “It’s just really been amazing to see.”

There’s more. Look at all these free resources, tools and trainings our industry is collecting. Look at the funds journalists are starting to help the huge number of people losing their jobs and going through furloughs. Look at the money people are giving to newsrooms that need it.

In 2010, I covered the Census for the St. Louis Beacon and got to work with public policy analysts to help make sense of the numbers. One of them taught me this: There are facts, and there are truths. The facts are the data. The truths are what’s happening on the ground.

We need them both.

Right now, every day, I’m tracking the layoffs, closures and furloughs in our industry. The list is devastating.

But I’m also tracking the good stuff. It’s out there, and we’re gonna need even more of it when all of this is over.

❤️
Kristen

Pictured above: From top: Someone has been setting up a table of free bagged lunches for those in need outside the Arundel Beach Road traffic circle in Severna Park. (Selene San Felice/Capital Gazette) Bottom right: Sydney Hoover covers schools in Eudora, Kansas from her home in De Soto, Kansas. (Image courtesy Sydney Hoover) Bottom middle: Arlene Van Dyk is a critical care nurse at Holy Name Medical Center in Teaneck. (Photo: Jeff Rhode Holy Name Hospital/Special to NorthJersey.com) Bottom left: Storytellers project founder and director, Megan Finnerty. (Photo: Jeremiah Toller)

Poynter’s coverage of local news and resources for them is made possible with support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation