Shutdowns, layoffs and pay cuts throttle the journalism industry

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Vulture’s Maria Elena Fernandez asked 37 showrunners and TV writers behind classics like Veep, 30 Rock and Friday Night Lights how their characters would deal with life during the coronavirus pandemic. The result is 37 bite-sized short stories planting your favorite characters squarely in this world, with its cacophony of universal, yet singular, challenges. This excerpt from an imagined Selina Meyer biography is an irreverent and hilarious antidote to the sentimental, heartwarming and sometimes hollow messages meant to comfort us during a disaster. It pairs well with this locker room speech from Friday Night Lights’ Coach Taylor, who reminds us why we’re self-isolating and how we’ll get through it – community.
This excellent Twitter thread from Hechinger Report journalist Lillian Mongeau lays out what it’s like to balance work with child care – two things that are incapable of balancing. Mongeau wrote this week about the U.S. child care system, which was fragile before the pandemic.
At The Daily Beast, Laura Bradley wrote about why some people with depression and anxiety have felt their symptoms improve during the pandemic.
From The Cut: For some of us, pressure from covid-19 is expressing itself in really weird, vivid dreams.

A covid-19 side effect: It’s decimating the journalism industry. Publications, from local alt-weeklies to national digital outlets, have shut down. Layoffs, furloughs and pay cuts are an industry standard, especially at chains. Perhaps none sting quite like the layoffs at the Cleveland Plain Dealer, where Advance Publications dropped 22 newsroom jobs just days after the company’s owners spent $730 million to buy, of all things, Ironman sports. After the layoffs, the Plain Dealer’s journalists were given marching orders to stop reporting on Cleveland and the state. Those coverage areas will be left to Advance’s Cleveland.com, which unlike the Plain Dealer, has no union.
From the Tampa Bay Times: Florida state officials could see a pandemic on the horizon, but governors and lawmakers made repeated cuts to programs to prepare for a public health crisis. By 2018, the state health department had lost more than 20 percent of its employees, leading to staffing shortages. Last year, public health workers missed the mark on an investigation into a hepatitis A outbreak by botching data and failing to interview every patient with the infection.

This week on Hard Reset, we spoke with Mississippi Today editor-in-chief Ryan L. Nave about covid-19, Mississippi politics and stereotypes about the South in national coronavirus coverage:
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said on Friday that the biggest banks had approved a lot of covid-19 SBA loans. But at that point, eight of the 10 largest banks in the United States hadn’t started accepting applications yet.

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Send me feedback, questions and tips: bryant@bigiftrue.org and 405-990-0988.

– Mollie Bryant