Journalism is about serving the community.
For me that time-honored maxim was never truer than during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Every story matters because it can potentially help someone to lead a better life.
Thousands of non-essential businesses were forced to shut down for months as governments tried to slow the coronavirus’ spread. Employees were laid off and entrepreneurs faced the real possibility that their dream of a thriving company would be extinguished.
In the pandemic’s early days, Newsday and the Long Island Association business group launched a webinar series to help small business owners.
Each week, hundreds tuned in as representatives from the U.S. Small Business Administration and New York State government, along with lawyers, accountants and college professors, shared their expertise and answered questions from the audience. I moderated the discussions, with the goal of getting as many questions answered as possible in 30 minutes.
I also wrote nearly every day about pandemic business-relief programs such as the federal Paycheck Protection Program loans.
Desperate entrepreneurs on Long Island and around the country called or sent email messages asking for help. I tried to respond to each one, often suggesting sources of reliable information that didn’t charge a fee.
A couple of years into the pandemic, a chamber of commerce president asked me why I cared whether an individual small business lived or died. The reason is that I started and ran a small newspaper in New Hampshire during my middle school years through freshman year in college.
The Stoddard Crier was a free weekly serving summer visitors to the Granite State’s southwestern corner. The first edition in 1979 was a single sheet printed on an old mimeograph machine owned by my father. There were three articles, all written by me, and one advertisement for the local marina.
The Stoddard Crier was largely a one-man operation with me producing the articles, selling ads and laying out the pages. My mother helped distribute the seven editions each summer. In 1984, the last year of publication, the Stoddard Crier had a weekly circulation of 4,000 and turned a modest profit.
My experiences with the little paper gave me a better understanding of the ups and downs of starting and running a business. They also taught me the importance of journalism to the community – that every story matters because it can potentially help someone to lead a better life.
