This is History and YOU are Writing the First Draft

Yesterday, all major sports just suspended or canceled their seasons. The last time something like this happened was during the World Wars.

Disney closed up both Disney World and Disneyland. Universal Studios and other theme parks closed as well. Cruise ships announced that they were going to stop sailing. Major events are canceled and the PGA Tour just canceled their marquee Players Championship here in Jacksonville after the first round.

This is a scary time, but it is also history.

This is stuff your grandkids and their kids will be reading about in years to come.

You guys are helping record history and it is up to you to tell the story.

The coronavirus will have a bigger impact on this economy than anything else in our lives.

While it is becoming more clear that we have a President that is not equipped to handle such a crisis, you have to ask is TV news?

All these years of getting rid of seasoned Journalists and replacing them with kids fresh out of school could come back to bite stations hard.

Richard Dyer the GM at Tegna’s WUSA (DC) held a staff meeting yesterday and told them that this is as big or bigger than 9/11 or the 2008 recession.

He’s right.

But sitting in that room as he talked was comedian Reese Watters, who also happens to be the main Anchor of the station’s 6AM morning newscast.

At Tegna’s WKYC in Cleveland, they also have a comic on the news staff that just posted a video on his personal Facebook that many thought wasn’t funny, but was racist.

Tegna had dumbed down their newscasts at many stations, they pushed out longtime Journalists and managers in an effort to do social media news with kids fresh out of school or comics.

Now, maybe the most important story in our lives is hitting and these stations don’t have the tools to tell the story.

In 1963, Walter Cronkite was iconic as he sat in the chair and told the American people that John F. Kennedy was dead.

ABC’s Peter Jennings told the country that the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded in 1986.

Tom Brokaw told us how our country was attacked on September 11, 2001.

Now In 2020, the news of a deadly pandemic will be reported by a couple of comics because Tegna thought this is what this business needed.

This is history.

Stop with the selfies and the cute handwashing videos and report the news that the people need right now.

The White House and politicians are kicking the coronavirus around like a political football and people are looking for someone, anyone to tell them the truth and what they should do next.

Let’s hope you are.

The viewers are counting on all of you.

---