Journalism in the Time of COVID
By Jon Ralston
COVID-19, the respiratory disease that has killed so many, almost suffocated us.
By “us” I mean The Nevada Independent, the intrepid band of journalists who came together four years ago to embark on an adventure in nonprofit journalism. After keeping it all together for three years with the help of some generous donors, 2020 was supposed to be our breakout year, when we finally took off and became financially sustainable.
Instead it became our survival year, and it surprisingly evolved into the best year of my professional life thanks to the kindness of strangers and the resilience of some of the best people and journalists I have known. What did not kill us not only made us stronger but made me appreciate how lucky and blessed I am.
March of last year seems like eons ago now, but my memory remains vivid of how I had to tell my staff that we were on life support. Our major donors, crushed as almost everyone was by the pandemic, had dried up. I had to borrow money from my brother, Geoff, just to make payroll.
And then I had one of the worst moments of my life, a Zoom call with my employees to tell them I was cutting their salaries by 25 percent in an effort to stay afloat. I’m emotional by nature, and I was especially so during the call.
Through my tears, I saw and heard their reactions, and I was rendered speechless. They were thanking me for not laying off anyone and seemed more determined than ever to fulfill our mission.
And have they ever.
As I scrambled for ways to ensure The Indy’s survival, they were not just accepting the challenge of covering a pandemic and all of the story spokes that emanated from it. They were working harder than ever, for three-quarters of their salaries in an uncertain future, rededicating themselves to our mission. I could not be prouder of them, and they saved us. They saved The Indy.
My personal journey through this Year of COVID has been painful and exhilarating. If you had told me last March that today The Indy would be as financially robust as we have ever been, I would have scoffed. But we are, and it has been something to watch, to live through.
After I stitched together the money to pay salaries in mid-March, I had no other choice but to go public with our troubles. I had to test my belief when I started The Indy in 2017: That there was a yearning out there for in-depth reporting on major issues and government policies, and that people would donate to such an endeavor.
So I put aside my pride, and I confessed: I told the world we were broke, and we needed help to survive. I did not have the luxury of the Review-Journal, where billionaire Sheldon Adelson could bleed oodles of cash and still sustain operations. We needed our readers to put their money where their eyeballs were.
And did they ever.
Over the next few months, hundreds upon hundreds of people made donations, most of them small, many of them recurring monthly outlays. Along with most of them were messages of support and encouragement. They told us they appreciated what the reporters were doing; they said the community needed us.
It wasn’t just gratifying; it was overwhelming.
My reporters noticed, too. We have a “donor” page on our internal Slack message board, and they saw the daily flood of contributions coming in. They would happily comment on the amounts, the messages, the volume.
I think it inspired them to do more, to do better. They saw that their work was valued.
People don’t have much sympathy for journalists these days, and I get it. Too many mistakes, too many high-profile controversies, a former president who popularized “f—e news” (I still can’t say or write it.). But if they could see what I see day after day, and what I have especially seen for the last year, they might change their minds.
Our team of reporters, without the ability to do in-person interviews, constrained by the pandemic’s restrictions, did what they have done for four years: They provided in-depth coverage, in this case of the COVID-19 infection in Nevada, showing through charts and stories the health and economic consequences. They asked pointed questions of elected officials, including the governor. They saw the human toll, experienced the rage of those who lost their jobs, chronicled the good, bad and ugly of the government response.
And they did all this while processing as human beings the impacts on their own lives – the claustrophobia, the agoraphobia, the ennui. It has been so enervating for so many, and in a hard-driving profession like ours, it would not be surprising to see the listlessness seep into copy, the constant barrage of human misery depress even the most resilient of us.
But my staff never lost sight of our mission and not only did the quality of their work not suffer, I’d argue we produced some of the best copy of our relatively short existence. Sometimes I wish others could listen in on our Zoom calls or eavesdrop on our Slack conversations to see the energy, the enthusiasm, the dialogue these remarkable journalists display every day.
I know I sound here as I do elsewhere like a proud father, beaming about his children’s accomplishments. I am indeed twice the age or more of my reporters, and one of the best things about this capstone adventure of my career is how much I have enjoyed mentoring these young journalists — and also learning from them.
We have never had a physical office, so the transition to Zoom has been less onerous for us than perhaps other organizations, journalistic and otherwise. But I also feel that we have grown even closer during the pandemic. The shared sacrifice we have all made has bound us together, just as the shared dedication to what we intended to do four years ago has made us a family.
I feel this in a way I never have before in any other work environment, and I have been in a few wonderful ones with wonderful people. The detachment, the isolation ironically has brought my emotions more to the fore, made me tear up while editing their beautifully rendered stories.
Like so many others, I, too, have been affected by the pandemic, especially as a 61-year-old kidney transplant recipient (37 years and going strong and ever knocking on wood). I’m slightly immunosuppressed, so I am very careful. And I constantly worry about my staff, making sure they are taking proper precautions, too.
I have a wonderful fiancée who bolsters me every day, but I have also drawn much sustenance during this difficult year from these reporters who have soldiered on despite adversity. Yes, of course there are many others in much worse situations.
But the experience of being responsible for employees who have mortgages or rent to pay has been a new one for me. It has been both a heavy responsibility and a motivating force. And it has changed me, I think, made me less narcissistic, less self-focused. And, yes, it has made me happier and more content than ever before in my life.
In addition to the reader support, we also had three major donors, Stephen Cloobeck, The Englestad Foundation, and the Action Now Initiative, help us when we needed it most last year. We also succeeded in obtaining a sizable PPP loan – more than $200,000. We used that money to make payroll over the summer, which helped us use the other big donations as fuel to push forward with campaigns to obtain even more recurring donations, and the donor channel on our Slack account is rarely silent these days.
I really believe that 2021 will be our best year yet. I am relieved and happy to say that, and so thankful to the staff who made all of it possible with their consistently spectacular work and work ethic.
I thought nearly a year ago that everything we had worked for would soon be asphyxiated. But the pandemic ironically breathed new life into The Indy — and myself.
Photo courtesy of The Nevada Independent
Jon Ralston has been covering politics in Nevada for more than 30 years. His blog, Ralston Reports, was founded in 2012 and now lives on The Nevada Independent website. Jon wrote for the Las Vegas Review-Journal for 15 years, the last seven as a freelance columnist. In 1999, Greenspun Media Group purchased his political newsletter, The Ralston Report, and hired him as a columnist for the Las Vegas Sun where his byline appeared until September 2012. He was also a columnist for the Reno Gazette-Journal from January 2015 until November 2016, when he left to start The Indy.
Over the years, Jon has hosted several TV programs, including Ralston Live on Vegas PBS and Ralston Reports on KSNV News 3. He also writes and publishes a Nevada-centric email newsletter called Flash that frames the political agenda for the day, breaks news, and offers analysis and snark. In 2012, Politico named Jon one of the Top 50 "Politicos to Watch." He frequently appears on MSNBC, FOX News, and PBS, and he has also appeared on NBC's long-running Meet the Press.
Jon is originally from Buffalo, New York. He has a B.A. in English from Cornell University and a M.A. in journalism from University of Michigan. He came to Las Vegas in 1984 as the night police reporter for the Las Vegas Review-Journal, later covering general assignment and county government before becoming a political reporter in 1986. He has a son, Jake. Jon loves movies and movie trivia and aspires to one day be The Nevada Independent's film critic, if they'll let him.
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