Ashley Spinks (photo submitted to The Daily Yonder) |
"News turned from the pandemic to the resulting indirect impact it was having on her community. Events were cancelled. Mask debates flared up. School re-openings were hashed out by officials. Government meetings went online," Carey reports. Meanwhile, "The pandemic and government actions to halt covid-19’s spread caused division in her community. Community members lashed out at her online. Small businesses, closed during shutdowns, couldn’t advertise, which caused financial strain at the paper. A spike in cases overnight led her to cancel plans for her October wedding."
The spike brought all of the emotional and mental strain of the past six months to a point for Spinks: "That’s when it came home to roost for me. Our job is to get information to people with good actionable data," Spinks told Carey. "Either people weren’t reading it, or they were ignoring it."
Spinks told Carey the stress caused a "crisis of faith in me – what is the value of my work if people don’t want to listen to it? I would say by nature, I’m anxious. But this has been more depression. I just have this deep sadness at the way we’re treating each other. Some of the commentary I get on my stories and the way people talk to each other at public meetings. … I feel really disheartened and disappointed in my small town. Small towns are not supposed to be like this."
Mike Buffington (photo provided) |
Buffington, 61, said some of his younger colleagues who haven't been through recessions and other downturns may be struggling more. "But I’ve been through stuff and recessions and downturns before, so I’m a little more confident that while this is pretty bad, we’ll find a way to survive," he told Carey.
Brad Martin (photo provided to Yonder) |
Martin doesn't feel anxiety or depression, but says he's feeling some increased pressure in trying to adequately cover the complicated, quickly changing story. "This is definitely keeping me on my toes," he told Carey. "Everything is a little more complex. With schools talking about re-opening, the questions were 'Can we open?' 'Should we open?' and 'How do we open?' They came up with three different plans. Just keeping up with all those details was the hard part."
Marcia Martinek |
“I think it really made a difference, just to have that human contact,” Martinek told Carey. “When we were all meeting together, we were a team. And we’ve always been a team. It was just so nice to be able to talk to someone. I think that did help me and other people in the office.”
Psychologist Tyler Arvig recommends that rural reporters try to set more work-life boundaries and try to schedule time to decompress, Carey reports.
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