CENTENNIAL SUNDAYS
Inside the newsroom during COVID
I knew as the first cases of COVID-19 emerged in our state that the pandemic was setting up to be one of those defining moments in history that would be looked back on for generations. At the time, I was city editor of New Mexico鈥檚 largest newspaper, the person quarterbacking news coverage for the Journal.
It began with a tip from a source at the medical school on March 11, 2020, alerting us that there was a confirmed case of the virus at University of New Mexico Hospital and that Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham would be holding a news conference to announce it.
We mobilized to publish a story as soon as we had confirmation and to provide continuous updates as the governor spoke. We sent out text and email alerts about the public health emergency she declared and her pleas for people to avoid crowds.
The Gathering of Nations 鈥� the largest gathering of Indigenous people in the world 鈥� was canceled. The state high school basketball tournaments continued, but the thousands of fans who typically pack into arenas were banned, something that would have been unthinkable just 24 hours earlier.
So began our odyssey to chronicle a virus that would end up killing thousands of New Mexicans.
Within days of those first cases, schools in our state were shuttered. Soon after, the largest archdiocese in New Mexico halted nearly all in-person church services.
We were living through a stunning historic moment. We knew our coverage would need to rise to it. And we would need to do it with reporters working remotely.
From the beginning, our reporters asked the people they were encountering what it was like to be in their shoes at that moment. We ended up with amazing stories, from a critical care nurse working with COVID patients and juggling life as a single mother to a widow who had lost her husband of 30 years but was unable to have a funeral service for him because she didn鈥檛 want to limit the guest list to a handful of relatives.
We went to the Navajo Nation to chronicle how it was responding to the crisis and why it had been hit so hard.
We told the life stories of New Mexicans lost and spoke to people whose loved ones died lonely deaths.
It was emotionally exhausting, but it was also the most meaningful work I did during my 25 years in journalism. Amid the darkness, our journalists were there for one another, checking in, celebrating milestones on Zoom, and even sharing Girl Scout cookies through the mail.
We pushed each other to be the best storytellers we could be as we etched our community鈥檚 pandemic story in history.
Martin Salazar is a former reporter, Editorial Board writer and city editor at the Journal. As city editor during COVID, he was responsible for determining how best to cover the barrage of story angles while keeping his staff safe.
