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EDITORIAL: Fighting for the truth

Oct. 4 to 10 is National Newspaper Week, a timely reminder that newspapers matter, because you matter. We’re here to tell your stories enthusiastically and fairly – and thanks to the success of our website, those stories are reaching more people than ever before.
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We won’t sugarcoat it: 2020 has been brutally hard on newspapers and the people they employ across the world – and not just because of the explosion of false and misleading information surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic.

In the early days of this pandemic, terrifying headlines declared the impending doom of the newspaper industry: “US newspapers face ‘extinction-level’ crisis as COVID-19 hits hard,” wrote The Guardian in April; a BBC column around the same time about the industry’s struggles ran with the headline: “How coronavirus infected publishing.”

Our reporters have surmounted unprecedented challenges offered up by COVID-19. Forced to work remotely for periods of time, not knowing what each day would bring, our writers persevered; we were, after all, writing history – not an easy task as new information about the virus seemed to develop on an hourly basis. At the same time, our carriers still hit the pavement to make sure the Wednesday paper reached every doorstep; our press crews, sales staff and production team continued putting their hearts into each edition of the Gazette.

Many of us watched papers crumble across the country, cutting back or ceasing operations. Yet we’re still here – a little more web-based than we were previously, and with just one edition per week, but still covering and celebrating our community.

This pandemic could indeed have sounded the death knell for newspapers, and did, for many of them. But those papers that retained community support and trust survived, and COVID-19 also brought out the very best that journalism has to offer. Newspapers rallied to the cries of their community members, often providing insightful context and much-needed fact-checking to the understandable hysteria that has enveloped the past seven months.

Here at the Gazette, we made it our mission to highlight the efforts of our residents to help one another during the most trying of times. We also didn’t shy away from the painful stories ushered in by this pandemic: the people struggling to cope with COVID, those who lost loved ones, the challenges of back-to-school and the very real fear many are still feeling.

The Gazette, and this community, is blessed to have journalists who care so deeply about the people and subjects they cover and who knew during this health crisis that both the good and the bad – and everything in between – needed to be written about.

We told your stories, because really this newspaper is about you. Oct. 4 to 10 is National Newspaper Week, a timely reminder that newspapers matter, because you matter. We’re here to tell your stories enthusiastically and fairly – and thanks to the success of our website, those stories are reaching more people than ever before.

In an era where trust in media is low and it’s increasingly easy for people and politicians to cry ‘fake news’, we take our responsibility to tell the truth and to shine a light on difficult subjects very seriously. We also pride ourselves in being a forum for robust community debate – online and in print. It’s up to all of us to make sure quality news continues to have a place in our society.

Editorials are the consensus view of the St. Albert Gazette’s editorial board.

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