There’s never been a year like 2020. There’s never been a better time to say thank you
Dear readers,
This year I bought a house. To be more precise, I closed on my house one week after the first COVID-19 case was reported in Muscogee County.
In the chaos of 2020, I signed my name hundreds of times on a stack of papers piled high and committed myself to a house — an act I’d only dreamed of one day accomplishing.
I’ve been in this house nearly every single day since then. I wake up, walk across the house from my bedroom to my home office and set up for the day. When the work’s all done (which some days, isn’t until well after dark), I close my laptop and hang out in my living room until I’m too tired to watch Netflix. (Mom if you’re reading this, at some point during the day I squeeze in at least one meal.) Then the sun comes up and it all starts again.
At this point you might want to shake me and say “what in the world were you thinking?!” and I’d say well, I’ve had that same thought every week since March. The home buying process is always stressful — a decades-long commitment to giving a bank a sack of money each month? Terrifying. — but the uncertainty of this year’s pandemic brought a whole new layer of panic.
But in the past nine months, the thing that has kept me energized and excited while I sit in this house is my job. Getting to wake up each day and lead a staff that’s focused on providing the most accurate and engaging information to our community is a privilege that I don’t take lightly.
Seeing more feedback than ever before from our readers is part of that energy, too. As Spring passed and our staff responded to breaking news at a breakneck speed, readers were sending us their thanks for what they saw as an invaluable community asset. We held a fundraising drive in the Fall where donors were invited to leave us messages and I can’t tell you how heartwarming it was to share those with our staff. Some days, those messages are what kept us pushing through the exhaustion, fear and uncertainty.
Reader support is what keeps our operation going. Whether you’re a print or digital subscriber, social media follower or an occasional reader, every bit adds up to building the Ledger-Enquirer into where it is now (and where we want to be).
Now we’re approaching the holidays and 2021. Everyone in our newsroom is still fully employed with no furloughs or pay cuts this year. We have an open position right now and expect to have another in the new year. And it’s already been said but, you know what makes that possible? You, reader.
We’ve broken crucial coronavirus news (local and statewide), covered a summer of social justice protests, told success stories, held elected officials accountable, reported on election twists and turns, and tried new things in between.
And we’re not stopping. We’ve got big plans for 2021 and want your input as we look to the months ahead.
We also want to make an impact in the community beyond just our journalism, which is why we’re excited to partner with United Way of the Chattahoochee Valley on a special initiative to fight food insecurity called “Spread the Good.” Your donation will directly impact our neighbors by helping to relieve food insecurity.
So if you’ve never heard it from someone at the Ledger-Enquirer, thank you dearly. Thank you for subscribing. Thank you for writing to our reporters — Nick, Tim, Adrienne, Mark, Madeleine, Mike and Josh — this year to make sure they feel supported. Thank you for never giving up on us during an extremely trying year, and thank you most for reading.
Lauren Gorla
This story was originally published December 18, 2020 at 11:09 AM.
