Coronavirus coverage for you, me, and free?
Coronavirus, coronavirus.
“Daddy did you know there’s something called coronavirus and you can’t go to Mexico? Ian told me that at school. You’re not going are you?”
Yes, coronavirus is on my eldest daughter’s and just about everyone’s minds these days, and I'm pushing all the topics I planned to cover this week to discuss: coronavirus! I see this as providing a reflection of every news organization right now: according to MuckRack Trends, there have been 1.6 million articles about the virus since the beginning of the year, with the number rising aggressively the last few weeks (see here for a view from Crowdtangle of how much social media is talking about COVID, too).
The latest dominos to fall in this state as of late Tuesday?
- The governor has declared a state of emergency as the number of cases rise;
- Airlines are slashing prices as planes are flying without many passengers; and
- Duke University is the first in-state school to move to all-online classes (The Chronicle, the independent student newspaper covering Duke has been all over the story and also has a great, Hearken-powered feature asking for reader/student questions they want answered). UNC and other state schools may be right behind (while state universities in the D.C. area among others have gone online already).
All of the above stories, and many being produced across this state, have one thing in common that is rare for 2020: they’re … free to read.
What paywall?
Many of the in-state publishers have dropped their paywalls on their coronavirus stories (or removed the stories from their traditional metering rules), following a playbook of sorts the media has developed for “public safety” stories like hurricanes and wildfires. (The L.A. Times famously, and perhaps unwisely, even dropped their paywall for stories when Kobe Bryant died earlier this year.)
All of these publishers have marked some or all of their coronavirus coverage as free (so you can access it whether you’re a subscriber or no matter how many stories you have viewed that month):
- The Raleigh News & Observer and The Charlotte Observer (McClatchy)
- The Fayetteville Observer and The Asheville Citizen-Times (new Gannett)
and
- Port City Daily (an independent online publisher in the Wilmington area since 2012, which also excluded stories about the last two hurricanes from their pay meter)
There’s a lot of threats to local news, as we continually discuss, and coronavirus poses a threat to our industry in a lot of new and increasingly scary ways (which Joshua Benton of the Nieman Journalism Lab profiles here). Think: canceled conferences, canceled events that we would typically cover, not to mention an economy heading in a scary direction…
So how are these publishers weighing all of that and making these decisions to make this content free? It's tricky to say the least.
On the one hand, these types of stories are public service journalism at its core. This is information that people really need to know. This is journalism as a mission-type stuff for real.
But … this is also our highest in-demand content. Any good subscription or consumer revenue marketing campaign will remind you of one thing: the value of good journalism. And what journalism are we producing of higher and greater value than reliable information about what to do, and what’s the latest, with this growing and panic-inducing virus?
So, yeah, it’s tricky.
“There’s a difference between a lot of people wanting to know and a lot of people needing to know,” Robyn Tomlin, southeast regional editor for McClatchy and executive editor for The Raleigh News & Observer, told me. She said she believes these coronavirus stories are in the latter "need to know" category, which is why the N&O and The Charlotte Observer have excluded their coronavirus coverage from their pay meter and are running this at the top of every one of their voluminous number of coronavirus stories: Note: The News & Observer and McClatchy news sites have lifted the paywall on this developing story, providing critical information to readers. To support vital reporting such as this, please consider a digital subscription.
Tomlin also wrote about the decision (see here). Both the Observers also dropped their paywall for stories around Hurricane Dorian last year. She said “when the immediate threat subsides, we’ll go back to business as usual.”
The N.C. newspapers owned by new Gannett have largely reached a similar policy as Tomlin: the stories will generally be free.
Katie Wadington, the outgoing news director at The Asheville Citizen-Times, said with coronavirus (like with critical weather updates), we’re “marking stories free when they include important guidance from officials or information that the public needs to know and is available elsewhere.”
The Fayetteville Observer, similar to McClatchy, is running a note at the top of each story to remind folks that they need reader support. Theirs reads: This content is being provided free as a public service to our readers during the coronavirus outbreak. Please support local journalism by subscribing to The Fayetteville Observer at https://www.fayobserver.com/subscribenow.
And publishers aren’t alone in making the decision to make this content free. YouTube is demonetizing videos about coronavirus (which they do with sensitive topics that they don’t believe should make money via their built-in ad service).
What are we doing with all of this coverage?
So we’re covering a lot about coronavirus (and letting people read it for free), but how are NC publishers, ya know, ... covering coronavirus?
These public safety and especially health-centered stories involve another tricky line: balancing between providing information to contextualize a story that is feeding into everyone’s alarmist instincts and … fanning the hysteria in doing so (1.6 million articles since Jan. 1!!!).
Here are just a small cross-section of the good stories/features I’ve seen on coronavirus across the Tar Heel state, the ones that have walked this fine line successfully:
- I love the FAQs I've seen that round up and answer reader questions, from:
- A lot of folks across the state have produced some other question-answering journalism (with some great SEO-friendly headlines), including:
More?
Many publishers have launched new standalone products, such as newsletters, about coronavirus. In this state, there are a couple of coronavirus-centered newsletters at the N&O and available through USA Today for the Gannett-owned newspapers.
Rose Hoban and my friends at NC Health News have created a topic page to round up all of their voluminous informative coverage on corona (see here), which many other publishers have done as well (the N&O’s is here).
Like the Chronicle, the N&O also is soliciting reader questions about coronavirus via a Google Form, which they’re using to drive coverage (see here). Tomlin said they’ve received dozens of questions, and reporter Brooke Cain has been tackling them in a Q&A that she will continue to update online with new answers daily.
Ultimately, Tomlin told me: “We have a fundamental belief that when there are situations where the health and safety of our community is threatened, that coverage should be available to as many people as possible.” And that is true especially with rampant misinformation being spread and fanned on social media and in other groups.
What are you seeing or doing with coronavirus coverage in the state? Drop me a line. One thing I know: this story isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. And here are some resources for journalists in the meantime about how to best cover this topic:
Resources
Al Tompkins from Poynter, whom I often turn to for advice, wrote about how to cover coronavirus responsibly and had a couple of great notes: "There is no law that says every time journalists mention the word 'virus' that they have to precede it with the word 'deadly.' It is true some people die. But we don’t call the traffic jams every day in every city 'deadly traffic jams' even though somebody will die every day in traffic."
In addition, many have advised against running generic photos of Chinatown and other images of Asian people in masks without context (that wearing face masks is very common in East Asian countries). See more here from the Asian American Journalists Association.
A couple of other resources from:
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