On March 12, a collaboration of 16 Montana newsrooms launched the first story of a series titled Graying Pains, months in the making, exploring Montana’s status as the demographically oldest state west of the Mississippi.
The next day, Montana Gov. Steve Bullock announced the state’s first four documented cases of COVID-19. If you read, watch, or listen to Montana media, you know what happened next.
The collaborating newsrooms responded by doing what newsrooms do best, immediately dispatching reporters, editors and photographers to cover the multifaceted and rapidly unfolding public health story. Small-town weeklies, urban dailies and broadcasters alike realigned their priorities to deliver critical coverage of the pandemic’s sweeping influence on seemingly every aspect of readers’ lives, at work, at home and at play.
They did so even as stay-at-home restrictions and safety precautions replaced face-to-face interviews and direct observation with phone calls and teleconferencing, even as the crisis expanded beyond the bounds