You’ve been sending us some very kind and generous notes about the work our team is doing providing information under these trying and unprecedented circumstances. We thank you for that. I would like to thank our whole team myself for work in circumstances few if any of us have experienced before. As I noted on February 28th – which now seems like half a lifetime ago – we will focus much of our effort on leveraging our journalistic experience finding, analyzing and amplifying trustworthy sources of information on the crisis. Our team is also focusing on reporting in areas of governmental action, agencies and policy decision-making where we bring great pre-existing experience to the table.
Let me remind you to keep the emails coming.
This means confidential tips where that is relevant (we are experienced and totally committed to keeping your confidences), but also simple reports of what you are seeing in your area. The latter example can be the most valuable. We also have numerous readers who have professional expertise tied to some aspects of this unfolding crisis. In many ways this category has always been the most valuable to us editorially. Epidemiologists and doctors are the most obvious but not the only ones – educators, economists, local government administrators, people in retail and transportation. These are a few examples. The list is almost endless. Our society is in the midst of a rapid deceleration and reorganization that will touch every aspect of our national life. Many of you will have some aspect of this you have great insight into. We want to hear from you.
Final point. I am corresponding with dozens of you a day. Many of my colleagues are doing the same. The intensity of the work right now in all of its dimensions makes it impossible to respond to all your reader updates. But I assure you that virtually every one of them, if not literally every last one, is getting a close look. They are not sitting in some untended inbox. We’re not only reading them but incorporating your insights and reports directly into our reporting. The flow of information from you to us is a cornerstone part of our editorial process, especially in an unprecedented moment such as this.
I remind you that we have placed all our COVID-19 related work outside the Prime paywall and we plan to continue to do this until the country’s current footing comes to an end.
We thank you for your trust and your readership. Let’s do this together.
