 I'm sure we'll have other folks grift in during the discussion. It is seven o'clock, so why don't we go ahead and get started? Okay. I want to welcome everyone to tonight's discussion about the financial impact of the COVID-19 pandemic is having on Virginia news organizations and their employees. This event has been organized by the Virginia Pro Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. My name is Jeff South on the chapters president. We'll be discussing how news organizations, newspapers and television stations are being affected economically by the coronavirus and the toll that the pandemic is taking on journalists in terms of job losses or loads and other hardships. We'll also look at the long-term effects that the pandemic may have on the news media landscape and the journalism profession in Virginia. We have a panel of five media professionals whom we will introduce shortly. The discussion will be moderated by Marisa Corto, the former publisher and editor-in-chief for the Daily Press Media Group, and now executive in residence at Hampton University. Marisa is well-prepared for this role. She's been co-producing a series of videos titled We Virginians about public policy in the Commonwealth in a post-pandemic world. So here's our format. We'll hear from our panelists for about 45 minutes, and during that time, please keep your microphones muted. Then we'll take questions from the audience for about 15 minutes, so we'll wrap up by 8 p.m. And if you have questions as we go along, type them in the chat box. You can find that by putting your cursor at the bottom of your screen and you'll see a link to the view version of the chat box. In that chat box, before this event ends, I will post links to the SPJA Virginia Pro website where later I'll post a video of this discussion. And I'll also provide links to the We Virginians video series, and to the Virginia is the Journalist Relief Fund, and to some other resources, including a video that Kim Greenwich, the Vice President of NBC12, provided at his station's empty newsroom. So without further ado, let me pass the microphone to Marisa Porto. Marisa? Thank you, Jeff. Let's get started by introducing the panelists. Kim Greenwich is the General Manager in Richmond, the NBC affiliate. Kim, if you would just share a little bit about yourself with our audience. Okay. Well, thank you first of all for putting this together. I think this will be very interesting for some of the people that listen to it with a very diverse group we have. Well, I'm a native New Yorker, born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, and I've loved television probably since I was a kid. I went to St. John's University, worked in sales and marketing at NBC and CBS New York, moved here in 1990 as an Account Executive at WWT. I've been here for 29 years, actually 30 years, August 15th. I thought I'd be here for five years when I moved my family here, and it's just a fantastic market. And we're currently owned by great television, and I became General Manager in 2011. So I've spent a big part of my career here and love the Richmond community. Thank you. We'll move to Michelle Pelletier, who is the marketing and branding expert director at 13 News Now in Norfolk and also is relatively new to the area having just moved here about three months ago. Michelle, can you tell us a little bit about yourself? Of course. Thanks for having me on the panel. I was born in Boston and raised in Canada. I still have dual citizenship. I've always been passionate about broadcasting, and that's really what I studied in college. After college, worked in Canada on a couple of TV shows and a sports network, and then moved over to the States to really focus on marketing at local TV stations. From there, I ended up working for a syndicator on the programming. Michelle, can you tell us a little bit about yourself? I know you were talking about how your dual citizenship and you just moved here. Yes, I just moved here. I actually moved from Phoenix, Arizona, where I was working on a syndicated TV show called The List, handling brand and marketing for them. Before that, I was working for Warner Butters, working on brands like TMZ and a couple of other TV shows. So really, my background is in, my recent background has been more on the television syndication side, but my first love was always local TV news. And that's why I decided to take this role with 13 News Now to get back in the broadcasting 30 and the local news arena. Well, we're happy to have you back in Virginia. Thank you. Our next guest panelist is Sarah Gregory, an award-winning reporter from the Virginia pilot. Sarah, if you would be so kind as to share a little bit background with us. Thank you. She is muted. Oh, I'm sorry. That's all right. Okay, there you go. Thank you. No, there you go. So I'm an education reporter at the Virginia pilot, and I have been here a little over two years, and I've been in Virginia for about five years, covering K-12 education. And I'm also chair of the Tidewater Media Guild, which is the union that represents journalists at the pilot and the Daily Press. Virginia Gazette and the Tidewater Review, and I've worked, I'm part of the group that is working on the Relief Fund. So that's a little bit of it. Well, welcome. Allison Rable, she is a reporter with the Daily Progress. Allison, can you tell us a little bit about yourself? Hi, yes. My name is Allison. I'm a reporter with the Daily Progress. I mostly cover Albemarle County government. I've been here for about five years. My first job out of college and used to cover business and then switch to covering county government. And I helped start the Virginia Journalist Relief Fund while I'm here today. All right. Well, thank you. Thank you for joining us. Terry Biggy is the editor in Green County at the Green County Record. Can you tell us a little bit about your background, please? Sure. Yeah, I'm working as though it's a weekly here in Green County just north of Charlottesville, part of the Lee network. And I'm the editor, so we do our own layouts. We write about everything. And I have been in journalism since 93. I have been in journalism for nearly a year now. I have been in journalism since the 90's. If you guys have any good news or bad news for yourself, give you guys some idea of how old I am. And I love investigative journalism, which I did at Virginia Tech. And I'd like to do more of, but we don't have a very big staff. All right. audience and advertising going to the digital, migrating to digital platforms and trying to recreate or innovate in the traditional business model. So can you tell us all of that as the backdrop to then COVID comes along and and here we are. Can you hear me because I can't hear you. Yes, sorry. Now okay. So it's interesting all of the change Marissa that you talked about that television states have been experiencing over time over the last 10 years has made us have to change our business model and not only get more involved in the web and the internet and everything that's involved with that but we have all invested over the years in more and more technology. When March 13th came as I said to the group earlier I remember Friday to 13th when we got the word from corporate that everyone had to go home. We had been in talking about what we would do if in fact we had to leave the building totally or have people work remotely and we at one point we're talking about a hundred percent of people working remotely and we started talking about how would we do that just like a lot of other news operations both radio TV broadcast and newspaper and we sat down and we talked about it. We basically had a plan put together but it wasn't a hundred percent but in a week's time out of a hundred and ten people that came into the television station we have a max of 30 people that are ever in the station at any given time and I was just truly amazed particularly by the news department about how they were able to do so much remotely right away. I guess the first innovation was our morning anchor Andrew Frieden morning meteorologist Andrew was secretly building a studio in his garage while this was going on and in four days time the news director Frank Jones came in and said hey Andrew wants to talk to you about something he wants to do and I said what is that he said he wants to be able to broadcast remotely and for me it's like well everyone else can run away but we have to be here broadcast television well we found out that we had to be more flexible and it was because of having the technology because all of us have to innovate for a living we were able to in five days pretty much clear the building the newsroom at any given time you you might see seven people in there and that's a crowd reporters working remotely doing their stories editing them saying them electronically coming in the morning and doing having their morning meetings and doing all that remotely I sat in on a lot of those calls and I was just amazed at not only that it got done but it was done very efficiently and there was no one that was really complaining about what they were doing and that really set the tone for the rest of the building for those people who had to work remotely so everything that we had to do to innovate and keep up with times over the last 10 years had most television station certainly outstation ready for prime time for this moment and even though it's certainly a new normal that I don't like but it is one that I believe that we'll have to be in for several months I'm sorry the view was on let's get so the next question for you chemist what have you seen across Virginia as far as the effects of the pandemic on the news industry well the biggest effect first of all as most of you know when advertising dollars come goes down that affects everything we're owned by great television and we're in a position that's not the same as every broadcast group but some but our CEO basically did a video after two weeks when we were into this and he talked about how we had survived the downturn in 2008-9 how we survived 9-11 and during all those times they said that great television never been furlough never laid one off and never cut salaries he said so you guys need to just do your jobs do them well and don't worry about losing income now that was true for everyone except for the sales staff we did do something pretty good for the sales staff to try to keep them whole not a hundred percent but that revenue went down and on average probably stations tv station i can speak mostly for probably in in april and may particularly lost 30 to 40 percent of anticipated revenues so that's a hit so it didn't go to a period when we started cutting everything but we actually had to spend money because we had to buy laptops we had to get people new microphones get poles get pee-pee eat gear for people had to get sanitizers and a lot of stations really had to do a lot of that on their own and to corporate would catch up but they gave us the freedom to do that but certainly across the landscape we've had furloughs we've had money that's been cut we know that the future is coming where we'll definitely have to tighten our belts and so this is going to be a tough year for everyone because the money will not be coming back in big turns for a while there is good news june looks much better than april and may so i'm optimistic about that for our business as we open up that's going to be a good thing and then hopefully we don't have a resurgence where we have to shelter in place again because that won't be good for business but the biggest thing for me is that i've seen the morale and the productivity and efficiency of particularly our news department has really simply amazed me i didn't truly think that we could get it done if you had asked me to do this a year ago and say do it in five days i would have told you that it could not be done and so i don't know a more innovative people than news people but it will be tough and some of the organizations that have been layoff and they have been furloughs up to 20 percent cuts with some people's salaries so certainly across the industry this is going to take a toll and uh it's responsibility of gms and advertising community and our business community to try to bring that revenue back in so that we can bring our business back to health thank you kim thank you kim this is a good time for us to go to michelle michelle um there you know clearly kim was talking about an ad revenue decline during the first few months of the pandemic you know you're already dealing with the business industry change you know he also mentioned layoffs and the sales and marketing teams can you tell us what you're seeing in your organization and what has happened to your team and your ad revenue well from you know from a revenues perspective obviously there's been there's been some loss but i think there's you know mostly and i'm trying to be you know kind of a positive positive thing on it here you know i think you know the biggest thing is from a marketing standpoint and from a news coverage standpoint we've seen huge amounts of viewership increased in you know most of our newscast we have a a new audience that's coming to local news due to the fact that they're actually trusting local news you know and for example our our demos for millennials and you know people are the younger younger viewers have grown up tremendously not just for our station but also for our station group tecna so we've seen a huge opportunity there not only with you know linear but also with digital i think a lot of people are being you know are sampling local news right now and it's a good thing for us i understand the revenue part i'm not so much involved in the revenue you know in the revenue part because you know i'm not involved in the sales department but you know from a marketing standpoint i think this has been a very very interesting you know time for us due to the fact that we're really talking on a daily basis to a new audience that would have not come to you know our medium if it wasn't for COVID-19 well um let's move to sarah, since 2008 the Pew Research Center has said that news organizations have eliminated positions half their positions in organizations across the country you know that that was happening long before COVID-19 can you tell us about the impact financially and emotionally that is happening to your colleagues in your organization? yeah so i mean i think we're all really concerned that jobs will be eliminated we've gone through two rounds of buyouts in the last two years most recently in january when we saw about 20 colleagues walk out the door and so we were already feeling sort of short staffed and feeling those pressures of trying to you know cover all the news in Hampton Roads and so that that pressure that we're feeling i think has just been accelerated and exacerbated by the COVID-19 challenges we are also now in week three of furloughs this is something that Tribune is doing company-wide and so folks who make above a certain threshold are having to take three weeks of furlough between may and the end of July and so that's you know adding another bit of uncertainty to all of our lives so you know i'm on furlough this week this is my first one and it's been hard sort of staying away from the news that you know i've had two sources text me actually like while we were talking and i can't look at you know i can't respond to them and i can't i can't do my job the way we all want to do our jobs and and and that's been really hard i think that people are really struggling with that and in the weeks when they're here they're you know they're working hard to make sure that their colleagues are not going to be having to scramble to cover too much for them or that if they are that you know they're trying to likely notes and like tips and sources and all of that sort of like extra work that we're doing on top of sort of covering you know one of the biggest news stories of our generation so the financial stress and uncertainty about our jobs has has sort of always been there but it does feel heightened right now thank you we'll go to allison allison as i understand it that one of the ways that you have been trying to help is is to to start a fund so um can you tell us a little bit about the fund tell us a little bit about what started uh what sparked the interest in that and and and how many folks have helped so far through the fund um well so my co-worker kathleen and i um had started to see that places were furloughing um and or laying off journalists um in i don't think it really had hit virginia too much yet but we started to see some papers and some companies were doing it and we were talking amongst ourselves about doing something specifically for our newsroom and our staff um and then i think um kathleen was like well we could we could go bigger than this and we could do a virginia thing and she reached out to sarah um and um some people in ronoke um other guilds um and kind of decided that we would do something for virginia journalists specifically mostly print journalists and freelancers who typically write um for print media um and we've i think close to 20 um there were a lot more people in the beginning i think i think a lot of people have realized that the extra six hundred dollars with the unemployment is pretty helpful for the time being that's obviously only going to be here until the end of july at this point so um we're expecting some more people will be requesting funds after that um if nothing gets extended or renewed um and especially um we don't know what's going to happen next quarter um and layoffs could be on the table at some places um so uh we're definitely glad we still have um quite a bit of funds left to distribute um we've talked about what happens if things go a little bit back to normal like what we do with this money um nothing obviously a solid yet but um a lot of people who have asked for funds um either were like i said at the beginning and weren't expecting to get furlough and realized that we weren't going to have money to pay a bill that was due this week and they thought they were um on a coming week um or had an emergency where they needed um additional funds anyways um and so um it's it's been nice because we call everybody and talk to them about what's going on um and it's it's it's it's nice to hear that at this point no one's um too badly affected by all this um but uh it it worries me a little bit going into the future about what the situation will be um yeah all right thank you Allison we appreciate that um terry let's get to you you have a different uh a little bit of a different uh market you're a weekly yeah so much much smaller than most everyone here on this call um can you tell us um what the long-term impact has been or what the what the impact has been on your organization and then maybe tell us a little bit about what you think the impact might be on the citizens of virginia um because of what's happening in the news industry around the around the commonwealth sure so um we're outside of charlottesville and the daily progress is our daily paper but the staff there means they don't get to cover the extended counties much so the weeklies that are out here are the most local news that these people get um we're at all the local meetings we're at you know the kids soccer games and all kinds of stuff like that and um people really love that i'm in a place where i don't think this will exist past june 30th the new fiscal year is july 1 early enterprises and i'd be really surprised if the weeklies make it pass there and that's a big problem for um local communities because the we've been here since 1903 and it's the only paper that's ever been dedicated directly to green county it's a small county uh 20 000 people but it does keep keep everybody together you know we've got church listings and and all the things that people really care about and it's not just going to be here it's everywhere that doesn't have a local newspaper anymore they might i feel like they'll lose a lot of their identity we do have media you know television in charlottesville they're only up here when it hits the fan which honestly in green it hits the fan a lot more than you would expect um but we don't get the coverage the way the charlottesville does and for people agreeing they they'll miss they'll miss having the green county news so is your expectation that in a few months you you may well not have a newspaper and you may not have a job yes i am preparing myself for that expectation 100 percent what does that mean when you say you're preparing yourself for that in the middle of a pandemic um i'm trying to think outside the box of what i can do if that happens for the people of green um are there ways to create my own paper is there a way to let me buy that paper or at least the name they don't own the building so the only thing they own would be the name um and people of green have been worried and asked if they could start donating to us um but right now we've said no um so i think people would rally but i think it would be different i wouldn't have benefits i wouldn't have 401k there's a lot lose that um i'm luckier than than a lot because i'm married but i worry that they'll lose a lot of information so what would you tell the public or legislators about the situation that the news industry finds itself in today and um is there any way that uh that they can help them in in in this in this time of need yeah i'm not against newspapers you know getting grants from from the federal government or you know stimulus packages i worry a little about the i don't know what the word is but the the appearance of of an influence by a political party or political system but at the same time i think we're going to have to find a way to raise money other than our typical models and going the non-profit route or somehow combining with a non-profit i think that would be a good start for local papers for local papers all right thank you terry thank you um michelle so the um it's pretty clear that the pandemic has had a negative effect on the news industry across the commonwealth but you're in the marketing and branding part of a news organization has there been any positive outcome from the the the news industries you know the news industry's consolidation and the issues that it's facing in the in this in this time of covid um from a marketing standpoint i i really haven't you know seen anything you know i've seen a lot of uh a lot of pivoting from our advertisers um that's obviously you know something that i'm working with um as a director of marketing and responsible for the relationship with advertisers um you know we've seen a lot of our advertisers change you know and cancel their buys and then changed the way they're operating i think the messaging has changed tremendously we've gone from a hard sell to really a i call it brand activism where every every advertisers had to reach out to the community and reach out to their customers in a totally different different way um you know we have helped our advertisers um reach out to the community and you know really actually send messages that have been very positive overall for the community through you know they're advertising so that's something that we've seen that's been very positive besides their ratings obviously and the you know the new audience that we've seen uh also you know for our news product i think you know the advertising the advertising community has had to really pivot the way that we've been in business and that's pretty much the biggest change from my perspective okay um sarah and allison perhaps you could answer for us um do you think the pandemic um and the financial issues caused by it will have long-term effects on your yourself or your colleagues um as far as you know sort of emotional and financial um uh effects yeah no i think that it will i think that a lot of people are um there are a lot of people who have been sort of um struggling with the uncertainty of the industry for a while and are now you know this is their breaking point right like this is the point at which they decide like i i need to find something more stable than news and so i worry that um a lot of my colleagues won't continue to see this as a viable career you know one year down the road i think um that's gonna be a big concern um and yeah i mean i think that like we're we're gonna see the long-term effects just by you know the continued whittling away of our newsrooms right like they're getting smaller and smaller and um there's not less news to cover right um so we're not um we're not able to go into things as in depth as we might want to all the time and we're having to make tough choices about what we cover and what we don't cover and down the road i think that that will i think readers will see that um i think um you know i i think my colleagues see that and i think we i i say a lot like i wish readers could see how hard we all work behind the scenes to make uh to make it so the readers don't see what um we're having to sort of scramble to cover and fill in the gaps for you know one person doing a job that was done by three people a couple years ago but um i think there's going to be a point at which you know we can't cover that up right i think um and i think that our communities will start to sort of feel the consequences of not having a strong watchdog looking at them Allison do you have any um concerns in particular about your organization and what you're seeing across the state um we already had empty positions before this that we don't know why they weren't filling um most recently we were told it was because of the pandemic um the positions are still budgeted but they're not actively trying to fill them right now one being uh the University of Virginia slash the hospital system uh or health reporter which obviously is probably the most important position uh to have filled right now and uh that has been open since October um and uh luckily in a weird way um the the reporter who had been in that position uh last got promoted so she's still here and is able to help us when we do have breaking news or big things we need to cover in that situation but uh we don't know how much longer that is going to last and that is a a big important position now and always um University of Virginia is the number one employer in this community and you're out in the hospital system and it's definitely number one um and uh it's i covered a big story last week about it before i was for a load and uh it's something that i feel if we had had a dedicated reporter on that beat still that that story would have come out weeks ago um and perhaps we would have gotten uh more stories about the situation with the furloughs there um in the time being since then uh and kind of what terry was saying i i've had people reach out to me and say like if one of you leave um during all of this right now do you think they're going to fill your positions and are we going to have uh an empty city of charlottesville reporter an empty elmoral county reporter empty cops reporter um so it's um it's it's the difficulty in explaining to people i i don't know the answer um and i i don't want to discourage people um from paying attention to what's going on because it's important and i know a lot of people care um but i feel like the news is it is usually not great um it's it's we don't know either or uh um our guess is as best as your guess in the situations um like this so uh it's it's definitely a little nerve racking um and just the thought of you we've already had we've had a business position open for a year and a half and we're just assuming that that's gone now um and then we have a uva sports reporter open which um i i understand a little bit why they're not filling it at the moment but um it's been open since october as well uh so that could have been filled a long time ago and it's not um so it's just um a little a little nerve racking to know when the next shoe is going to drop right right so kim i'm going to wrap it up with we've run a little long tonight so thanks to the audience for for sticking with us um but i know we have some questions i'm going to ask the last my last question to you kim um before kovid you could see some news organizations um close shutting down closing right you could see some of them moving from a for-profit model to a non-profit model you see a lot of entrepreneurial efforts in the news industry right now and then kovid has come along and here we are and some of the news organizations obviously are better financial position than others can you tell us um you know what you think this watershed event is is going to do um you know to change the business model and and what you think the long-term effects are in the news industry in virginia i know this won't sound um like it's reality for a lot of us that run this call particularly for some organizations um as sarah said might not exist um in a couple of months um some people some places weeks and that's a lot of radio stations some tv stations newspapers for sure but i do feel that when this is all over that we will be a stronger industry than we've ever been before and here are the reasons why we've had to innovate more than ever before and the most important thing that any audience knows is that the most important news that they receive is local news is local news that is going on in your community one of the first things that we talked about was not just what we could do for our staff what would we do as a station to make sure that we stood up for the community not only bringing them news that they needed to hear but what about all those non-profit organizations that would not make it so we partnered with the community foundation and also with the united way and we wanted to know we know that there's a relief fund where is the money going we wanted to know that that money was going directly to organizations that need to be stood up not just right now but for the next two years this is when leadership from all of us matters so much and this is also the time that we have to because we're being forced to reinvent ourselves I believe that when we come out of this there'll be more partnerships there'll probably have to be more partnerships with newspapers and broadcast stations and radio stations national association of broadcasters we're already talking about what can we do more and not less because the one thing I do believe is that we have to walk run stand on our heads dance and chew gum at the same time and I believe that we absolutely can do it and it's forms like this where we'll have to share ideas when we know that someone is in trouble I believe that government funds that the NAB and the VAB is fighting hard to get I believe they should go the local organizations like yours because your weekly my tv station a radio station newspaper is no different than any other essential organization we are the first responders and first informers and we all take that very seriously I think that this industry is going to change sometime change comes because you're forced to change and sometime change comes because you're being very innovative this is one of those times when we're being forced to change and I believe we'll come out good on the other side now if there is so what do you do so Sarah talked about what's the next thing Terry talked about what's the next thing I want to consume that media online we've seen that there is a millennial audience I'm sorry it'll be a long time before they get up and watch us every single day even though they're doing it now and there's testing but we are trying to make sure we reach them online we are trying to do an OTT channel and make sure that we do something different than we've done before all of this has forced us to actually be more innovative and more productive and also to listen to more voices than just the news director the general manager and the marketing director because people will tell you what it is they like and what they don't especially when they're sitting at home 24-7 just go on social media and I tell people any email that comes into the station whoever it comes from whether they hate what you're saying whether they think you're biased whether they think you're just a fake news media answer every single email with the facts it is amazing that when you take the time to be courteous you respond to them directly I have never had someone come back and ever fight again against the facts because they know what the truth is they're just angry and we're in an angry society right now so I believe that what we do matters more than it ever has before in the history of our industry and I seriously mean that we're going to be the ones bring the public through this pandemic we're the ones who are going to tell them yes this is what you should do when you're outside ignore people who don't believe in listening to the rules that we need to follow just continue to give the facts that at the end of the day our business is not to be led by the public we need to listen to them but we need to continue to give them information that they need as Michelle said and this is a lot with broadcast but it is also online I think a print as whether I read it with the newspaper or whether I read it on this screen both have value and we have to evolve and I think that um partnerships and innovation is going to be the thing that brings us through and there is an audience an advertising audience that is willing to pay for that value I have more subscriptions to things that I don't even know how I got that subscription but I pay five dollars a month so I can get that New York Times or that weekly you go when you say to that weekly people say they want to donate money say what I'd rather you do is subscribe to my online service that people are willing to do that because you're the only ones who are going to be in your community giving them that local news that they need we need weeklies we need newspapers and broadcasting we need the newspapers to stand up we need them to be online because as you know the way we run we can't follow folks story but we love it when we say can you also stream this from my community oh yes I can do that because I don't have to leave the building to do that so I could go on forever but I am an optimist and I truly feel that we are going to come out on the other side better and what we have to do is call each other and say hey Kim hey Marissa like what you said the other night keep me in mind this is my resume this is what I offer in terms of value and we have to help each other achieve more excellent and I believe that we can continue to do that that seems like a nice place to stop and turn it over to Jeff and say Jeff do we have any questions from the audience okay so the the zoom bombers who I've tried to block every single one and kick them out they pretty much vandalized our chat box so we're not going to use the chat box don't even look at the chat box it's not working but um we can uh I can unmute people or if you want to raise your hand if you've got a question um in fact let me let me just put Greg Gilligan on the spot because he because you're such a good interviewer Greg let me so I've um invited you to unmute and what questions what question might come to your mind after listening to this discussion well I think you know that I'm not sure it's a question but in terms of the discussion you know I fear that you know for league enterprises which there are three newspapers here with league enterprises including myself um we had to take uh two weeks of furlough either in april may or june I'm taking my week this week as well um and we had to do by the end of june my fear is what's going to happen after june after june when july 1st rolls around and um whoever said that they thought our fiscal year ended june 30th it does not it the the uh fiscal year doesn't end until september so they changed it somehow i'm not sure when they changed it but they changed it um I can't I was trying to find that information and Lee also I mean while they have the cash on hand um Lee's stock price has fallen below uh the necessary requirements to the New York Stock Exchange so they're also in trouble there too so so the real question that no one goes okay so let's say we have to take more furlough the second half of the year well what happens to all of our vacation time so now you're gonna have people on you know because most people have taken the furlough haven't taken any vacation this is the first time I've had off since the beginning of the year um and this is a furlough week versus a vacation week and normally I would have had two or three weeks of of vacation by now so that that's that's going to be a concern is the you know going forward what's going to happen um to people um whether it's our organization or other organizations now I'll also say switching gears too that at the time to dispatch we've been lucky we'd actually have hired I want to say like four or five different reporters and editors in the last you know two months and we have an opening right now that we're actively seeking hiring a news editor for our government team so our healthcare reporter left at the beginning of May and and so one of our our government team editors she decided she wanted to go back to reporting so she's doing that but we we've hired um you know two uh government reporters local government reporters so I guess we're we're the flip of of what others and how why are we able to do it and the others aren't I'm not really sure other folks who might want to chime in either the question or comment sure got it Logan thanks um I wanted to ask if anyone has been feeling like compassion fatigue that you're hearing all these stories from everyone in your community and then you yourself as a reporter kind of have to like Sarah was mentioning you just kind of tuck it away and you try not to tell readers what you're feeling day to day I'll take this I mean I think definitely um that's been um that's sort of part of our jobs normally but we have been hearing from a lot a lot more people are struggling now and so we're hearing from a lot more people um I think like on the flip side it's sort of um it's been a way to connect with sources like when I've talked with them um because there is this like shared experience that we are all going through um and um it I think has um made me more empathetic and I think it has made sources um I just think that like um we've been able to have like richer conversations almost because of it just um because we are all sort of understanding everyone's in the same boat um but yeah I mean it does it does wear on you and I think someone said earlier like your your home is your work and your work is your home and there's very little like separation between the two so and um journalists aren't really known for being able to separate those two to begin with so um yeah that's definitely obviously gotten harder right now I've been having um not so much compassion fatigue but um creative fatigue and being able to come up with the story ideas we I have a feature publication that I just started um everything was humming along um and we had advertisers coming on board and it's a features publication and we had to kind of like go and you know we were humming along and had all these great ideas and had to come and stop literally tear down our website um because it was all about you know getting out and about on the peninsula tear it down and say okay now we're going to be going online and now it's coming about about like how we have to be you know just re reverse things and be creative online and um we were so happy that now um there's going to be a band playing at a local restaurant this weekend and it was like okay this is front page news because there's going to be a band and they're playing on a piano on a patio and it was like wow you know and but but it was yeah a lot of not a creative fatigue guys I've been having a little bit of and it was um hard and you know the uh the local uh animal shelter it has no longer taking appointments but they're opening their doors at you know 10 people at a time and it was like wow we got they got 30 kittens in and that's a big thing and so but yeah there's been like more of a creative fatigue that I've been you know having that that's been and and I've been working from home for 15 years so I'm kind of laughing at these people that are complaining about working home but um yeah that's that's been hard is the creative fatigue and I also have a high school senior so there's just kind of this double whammy that has been hitting my family a little bit hard um you know but yeah that's that's the fatigue I'm you know having a little bit of but yeah I've been getting a lot of support from advertisers but in a way that like they want to come in but they're just saying not now just call me call me in a month and Brett did you have a that was actually a great launching point I was going to ask that's a friend that doesn't know I'm Brett I work at WayVTV10 in Norfolk and I was going to ask Kim and anybody else can chime in just about the future or what you are hearing from advertising because I know right now under the current business model that's where a lot of it comes from and one of the scariest things to me is what maybe a few weeks ago in 60 minutes when they went to Ford and GM in Detroit Michigan and talked about making ventilators I think Noro or whoever did the piece basically said in the last month zero trucks were made here and I know I was taught from you know early is is that you know the auto industry when gas dollars went down that's where the 2008 TV news got punched in the gut and I'm sure it is the same for newspapers local car dealerships so what's what what are we looking at there in as much insight as anyone here could could provide are they gonna I mean if we don't sell cars or is that really gonna get things gonna get worse um I wish I could predict 100% but I can definitely predict month to month one of the things that we are seeing and I do predict that you're going to see a couple of things he will we go into a recession if you watch CNBC during the day and you talk to 10 of the people some will say yes but it'll be a different recession than we've ever had people will say well not really a recession it'll be a little bit of a slow downturn and then others will say you know what I really don't know but but here's what I I am seeing in the community we have certain TV in the car industry advertisers some never went off of TV they dropped what they were doing they lowered their numbers and I probably called more owners in business than I have ever done in my career because I think this is a time when you need to let them know personally that you care so I talked to Crossroads Automotive I was just curious as to and I asked him I said what made you stay on the air he said because I've realized that one people are still watching a lot of TV and as Michelle said before the TV advertising is actually the viewership is actually up and he said I know that I won't sell as many cars as I have before but if I disappear altogether and not offer people deals then I won't sell any cars at all so he values advertising what he values is what people value is the content that all of you all create every day so for me when I look at the numbers right now I know that June looks better than April April look better than May and by now because we will be in June in a couple days I had more cancellations on my station this time April going into May I'm not seeing them right now so people are holding on so I think that where I might have been down not numbers to publish but just off the record where I may have been down 35% May I think that June will be more like minus 20% now we never go home and praise being down by 20% but for the people like you who have a partnership we're relying on advertising ready to go here's another interesting thing May was the largest new business development month of the year new business development that accounts like it did from home so who advertised some banks were on never on before what were they on talking about goodwill helping the community others were on offering a deal if you set an appointment with us we'll give you a $25 certificate to go to a local restaurant we've never seen clients show their heart more than ever before and understand that people love it Paramount Builders he was going to do a deal with one station in the market he came to us he definitely drove a hard bargain but we had inventory and what he did this is the CEO of the company every time this commercial comes on I still watch it he came on he says I know that these are hard times everybody's hurting went on and then he talked about if you set an appointment about getting a new roof or new shutters or whatever it is but every appointment every appointment at every sale I will give a $25 gift certificate to you to use at a local restaurant okay then he changed his copy to we are now recruiting this is real life story we are now recruiting his new copy was because he was doing well people were at home want to do projects get that deck done time for you to you know change that sighting on the house so there is momentum that is building there and I believe that it will begin to continue to build with the different industries it's just going to be a slower incline than maybe we would see when the economy just gets jump-started the account executives are more excited than ever because they've been able to see how productive they can be from being on the phone calling someone you don't know and actually doing what you do is say hey we have great content and we want to introduce your product to an audience so I'm a business person and when they ask us for forecast my forecast for June is up most of my colleagues the forecast for June is up what will happen will really depend on consumers like you who say okay I'm going to continue to spend online but I'm also going to start now spending in the local economy but we're going to have to do it carefully and slowly we could open up all the malls sell everybody go shoulder to shoulder we could do that tomorrow and guess what there is a good percentage of people that will go in and buy all those products that would be a mistake because what we don't want to have is a setback so we just have to do this in an incremental way but I believe that it will get better but it will take us a time to get back to where we were how long that will be could be a year I don't want to be that pessimistic what could be here's the other thing that's coming that doesn't affect everybody but it's going to come in a big way it's that ugly word but great dollars that people love and it pays to rent political advertising it's going to be coming in droves come September it is going to be huge and it's going to be that catalyst for our market that is going to tighten up the inventory so that we can continue to sell to other advertisers but it's going to also help the economy and because they haven't been spending a lot of money on advertising there is a backlog on that money and you're going to be sick of TV advertising in the fourth quarter I promise you but this is one time when everybody should say bring on those dollars whether they're in newspaper radio all of the collective money whether it's in TV or radio or newspaper it helps all of us it really does and you're going to see that come so I'm not just a phony optimistic person when I think the news is not going to be good I say it and I say it to my people because sometimes you have to go and say we got to cut budget by five percent I've had many of those conversations but I'm telling people now you do your work and this is when leadership really matters a lot staying in touch with your people letting them know you care about them but more importantly letting all the segments in your individual communities going out there and let them know by your content that you cover that you care about all communities equity now inclusion and all of those things are more important than ever before people are watching us closer than ever before and when you ignore their story that's when they will leave you and not come back so Brent I think what you all are doing is going to continue to be well it's just going to be different and Michelle since you've got your ear to of course the advertising world how does that rest you do you do you also see a comeback in advertising once this thing is over sorry I had to mute yes definitely I mean I think you know like Kim said it's going to be you know slow slower we see you know political definitely being very strong in September I think the advertisers you know like I said earlier they're pivoting their message being more community oriented but also they will be more creative also in the way they reach out to their you know to their clients their customers so I think there's definitely you know a lot of hope there and there's definitely a lot of innovation and you know from a marketing and advertising standpoint that will you know kind of keep the business going in my opinion right well um that brings us right to eight o'clock and so um I think we might want to end the discussion here but I do have those links that I'm going to post on the Virginia pro j website so later on if you go to spjda.com that's where I'll put links to um some articles that some of the panelists and Marisa had sent me and so I'll put those there I really want thank you guys for joining in on this this discussion for there are panelists for Marisa and for all the members of the audience I apologize again for the zoom bombing my first experience