I evaded the modern plague for two years, four months and six days, but the COVID-19 coronavirus finally got its hooks in me just over a week ago.
It arrived on our shores in mid-January after starting in Wuhan, China and rapidly spreading around the globe, with the first cases in Alabama emerging on my birthday, March 26, 2020.
The March 2020 press conference where things abruptly got real in DeKalb County. It feels like a decade must have passed since that day.
If I’ve been scarce lately, there’s a good reason. Not to count my chickens before they hatch, but I just sent to press the final 14 page section for 2022 “Progress edition.”
My former managing editor left the job at the end of January, leaving it up to me as the publisher to lay out 98 extra broadsheet pages from 11 sections, 120 magazine pages and nine regular newspaper editions. I don’t know what the math totals up to — and frankly, I am too exhausted to do math right now, or ever, really — but suffice to say that I have been working about 90 hours a week just to do the editor’s job and mine as publisher. Lots of going in at 8 a.m. and heading home at about 9 p.m.-ish nearly every single day since early February. All while dealing with some silly drama manufactured by someone in my personal life and fighting a nasty hacking cough that left me feeling like my obituary might get typed up before it all ended.
But dammit, I have survived!
Do we dare believe that we are on the downward slope of this pandemic? We are cautiously optimistic that we may have turned the corner, but lesser so than the glee we felt after the mass vaccination rollout began at the start of the year. One by one, the precautions that returned when COVID-19’s Delta variant surged appear to be loosening their grip on our lives as the number of new cases drops.
This may be a good time to reflect on the lessons we learned as a society. Failure to do so dooms us to more disruption the next time we face a public health crisis. Here are some of the conclusions I’ve reached…
I’ve been restless lately and a bit depressed. I have a lot on my mind.
I imagined things would be so different after the vaccinations began. I pictured a summer of fun and connection to my fellow human beings. Not what the summer of 2021 has turned out to be: A time of great division with large numbers of my neighbors eager to dismiss experts and believe nonsense and obnoxiously mock those of us who are trying to do the right thing.
This week I interviewed a local doctor and actually had to ask the question, “Should human beings go down to the local feed store and ingest a deworming product meant for horses to treat COVID-19?”
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When I first got to Auburn for college, I was fortunate to have a mentor, an older guy named Burson Dixson who took me under his wing and showed me the ropes, as the saying goes. Maybe he saw this awkward skinny kid integrating into his group of friends and decided it would be good karma to make sure I graduated with not only a degree but also an education on life.
He taught me many things, but the one that stands out right now is his advice on asking for forgiveness rather than permission. Specifically, our tendency as human beings to perceive that someone belongs somewhere if they appear to belong. “Faking it until making it,” if you prefer.
The Local Journalism Sustainability Act (H.R. 3940) has now been reintroduced into Congress. I am asking you to take a moment and reach out to your US Congressional Representative to ask them to cosponsor H.R. 3940. This is a bipartisan bill that both Democrats and Republicans are working on.
Time is of the essence, so please contact them today. A phone call is best, but emails can also be effective. If you aren’t sure who is your representative, click here.
The newspaper I publish is more fortunate than a lot of others, who are really struggling financially. We have the benefit of loyal subscribers whose choice to advertise and subscribe is an expression of caring about our community.
Still, it’s impossible to ignore the “elephant in the room” as people frequently ask me what it is like to be the publisher of a community newspaper during a time of tremendous disruption for our business model.
The internet has had a devastating impact on the print advertising industry. In about the last decade, America has seen more than 1,800 newspapers vanish. Even in the newspapers that have survived, about half of newsroom staff journalists have been let go, leaving publications as shells of their former selves.
Today I learned that my article about John Dersham for DeKalb Living magazine won 2nd Place in the category of “Best Personality Profile” in the Alabama Press Association Better Newspaper Contest awards.
The article detailed John’s love of and career in photography. While living in Nashville, he worked as a regional general manager for Kodak, responsible for sales to retail stores in seven states with 45 sales representatives bellowing him covering individual accounts. The article got into the impact of declining sales on photographers and camera shops as the medium increasingly transitioned from film to digital files. While visiting friends in DeKalb County, Alabama, he and his wife fell in love with the area and moved here. He became director of the local tourism marketing organization.
In the same competition, in the newspaper category, I also won:
2nd Place – “Best News Feature Story Coverage”: “Local WWII veteran turns 100 years old”
2nd Place – “Best Spot News Story”: “Flood waters damage DeKalb bridges, homes and businesses”
3rd Place – “Best Spot News Photo”: “Peaceful protest held in downtown Fort Payne”
3rd Place – “Best Photo Essay”: “Flood waters damage DeKalb bridges, homes and businesses”
Today marks 10 years since the infamous 2011 severe weather that stuck the state of Alabama. On that day a decade ago, a series of long-track tornadoes tore through Alabama in three waves across 35 of the state’s 67 counties.
The unprecedented event claimed the lives of 254 Alabamians, injured more than 2,000 and devastated the state. It was one of the deadliest tornado outbreaks recorded in Alabama since 1932, with 348 people dying across several states. Here in DeKalb County it claimed 34 lives.
It is a tribute to our strength and resiliency that we were able to recover from such a horrific tragedy and rebuild our broken communities.
I recall that the weather was threatening all day long in wave after wave of severe thunderstorms and some of the strongest winds I’d ever seen. The trees in our yard were being tossed about like rag dolls.
Busiest Time of the Year Ends
I’m finally getting to come up for air a little bit after spending the last three months working on The Times-Journal’s annual Progress edition.
If you subscribe — which I certainly hope you do if you are a fan of my writing and photography because that’s where the overwhelming majority of it now appears – you will have received these amazing issues throughout the month of March.
Progress is always a massive undertaking that requires months of hard work by a team of creatives and ad sales reps who get out there and sell.
Finishing it means great relief to everyone in the TJ building because we have a tangible result of all of that effort we can proudly hold in our hands, along with some awesome deposits as checks arrive from advertisers. I sincerely hope they felt it was a great value for their money and interesting enough to attract a lot of eyeballs who will now shop with them.
Please, if you enjoy the paper, drop our name in these stores and tell them you learned about them in the Times-Journal.
You don’t know the lasting impact that makes when a business owner ponders where to direct his or her precious ad budget. We aim every day to produce such a quality product that people don’t want to miss any issue, making it a useful platform for our advertisers to reach buyers.
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I finally got the COVID-19 vaccine, just shy of a year from the first confirmed case here in Alabama.
The first dose did make me feel a bit mentally foggy. Several hours after the followup shot, feeling a bit more achy. Just guzzled some Theraflu, hopefully I can sleep well tonight and wake up rested.
I hear it takes two weeks for it to reach maximum effectiveness. Can’t wait to go on a date or listen to live music with friends again!
