Dear Reader, There are many things I can list about the past 14 months that would have been unthinkable to me in a pre-pandemic era.
But this one gets me the most: I have 11 employees who work for me whom I’ve never met. I’ve had five others – all interns – who started, worked and left their stints without me ever shaking their hand.
Or hearing a police scanner. Or sitting anxiously next to an editor as their story was dissected. Or seeing veteran editors, reporters and photographers scramble when a huge story breaks.
Even though we’re a statewide company, we’re tight-knit. Before COVID, I’d routinely rack up 25,000 miles a year on my car, traveling to our nine newsrooms for staff visits, training and the occasional celebration.
Since March 2020, our hubs have sat empty. We work from our homes, from the field, occasionally from a coffee shop. We see one another on video calls; we buzz each other in text strings.
But this is no way to run a business. This is no way to run a human enterprise. Humans are social, and journalists are creative, collaborative sorts. We have figured out how to get by, just like the Tom Hanks’ character on “Castaway” cobbled out a way to subsist on a remote island. But as he learned, subsisting is not the same as flourishing.
This past week, the first hint of an escape from these circumstances came when Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer announced that the state had hit the 55 percent vaccination threshold. Under the “MI Vacc to Normal” scenario she laid out in April, that will allow all businesses to return to offices on May 24.
It’s going to take some time for us to figure out the steps for going back into our spaces. It’s not all logistics, like cleaning and security and supplies. It’s also grappling with what we’ve been through, emotionally, and how we start to navigate toward something we once considered normal.
That was the topic of a fascinating discussion this week on MLive’s Behind the Headlines podcast, where we were joined by Eric Gaertner, news leader of our largest news hub, in Grand Rapids.
We talked about March 13, 2020 – I happened to be in Grand Rapids that day for a series of company “town hall” meetings that were scrubbed at the last minute as the COVID situation was breaking in real time.
“I remember thinking, ‘Well, we're just not going to be here for a couple of weeks … we can do two weeks. No problem. We won’t have to change much,’” Gaertner said. “But that obviously didn’t happen.”
Since then, Gaertner and other MLive news leaders have had to engineer a way to assign, edit and publish thousands of stories a month without ever sitting down with an employee. All while stories that might not happen but once in a journalist’s career – a pandemic, massive social justice protests and unrest, and an election that threatened democratic institutions – slammed together like tectonic plates.
And that’s just the “hard” management skill aspect, which became more difficult in every way. The “soft” demands of leadership – understanding and accommodating human needs – not only remained, but have been under incredible pressure on a daily basis.
One reporter in Grand Rapids had an intimidating encounter on an assignment late on a Friday; instead of coming back to a newsroom where their distress would have been apparent, the employee went home and Gaertner didn’t learn about it until Monday.
“I realize now that it's so much easier to know how people are doing, mentally, when we're in the office,” he said. “You can put on a happy face for a 20-minute (video) call. But if I can see you all day long, I can get a better feel.”
I’ll look back on this past year-plus and see many things that made me proud: How we covered history as it unfolded, and kept you informed. That we figured out how to get the work done in incredible circumstances. That we did our jobs and kept journalism, and this company, viable.
We can’t get back what was lost, but we can start to rebuild the rhythms of the newsroom, and the support system for journalists that feeds off social interaction and collaboration.
“We were already close, but I think we’ll be closer when we’re back together,” Gaertner said. “Day to day, I think it will do wonders for mental health.”
It will for mine, I can tell you. I have a lot of handshakes to catch up on, and some people I’d really like to get to know face to face.
# # #
🎧To listen to this week’s Behind the Headlines podcast, click here. To listen on Spotify, click here.
Editor's note: I value your feedback to my columns, story tips and your suggestions on how to improve our coverage. Let me know how MLive helps you, and how we can do better. Please feel free to reach out by emailing me at editor@mlive.com.
John Hiner Executive Editor Vice President of Content Mlive Media Group
Having trouble viewing this email? View in your browser.
To ensure receipt of our emails, please add newsletters@update.mlive.com to your address book or safe sender list. You received this email because you are a subscriber to MLive.com newsletters. |