I decided to resurrect our “Weekly Roundup” feature this week. The last time we published this popular Sunday feature was March 1 — B.C. “Before Coronavirus.”
On that Sunday, I wrote about an upcoming blood drive and how important it is for everyone to step up and give blood. In retrospect, B.C. life seems so simple now.
That Wednesday, March 4, the nightmare began. I still haven’t really processed it all. Everything just seemed to go nuts and by the middle of that month, the world as we knew it came crashing down around us.
A long string of 18-hour, fear-filled workdays ensued, as we struggled to keep up with what seemed like a tsunami of news. (“Just keep swimming, just keep swimming…”) Closings, cancellations, emergency orders, data on infections, hospitalizations, intubations, deaths. Trying to make sense of it all, to present information in a sober, fact-based way and at the same time trying to take care of ourselves. All while not knowing what lie ahead.
In many ways, that’s still true. We watch in horror as this virus surges in other regions of the country, overwhelming hospitals and taking a massive toll on lives and livelihoods. We wonder if — or when — it will boomerang back to this region and if we learned enough hard lessons this spring to avoid another catastrophic outbreak here. And what will post-pandemic life be like, once this is truly “over?” (Will it ever be truly over?) At best, it’s bewildering. At worst, it’s terrifying.
This pandemic has affected all of us in so many ways. Everyone has been touched by loss, illness, financial pain, and enormous emotional stress. As I said earlier, I’m still processing. At this point, I’m just happy to be here — alive, healthy and still able to keep doing what I love in a place that matters.
If anything, this calamity has deepened my resolve to serve our core mission: reporting news that matters in a place that matters: our community, our hometown.
I’m happy to be finally getting the opportunity to write about something other than the coronavirus 24/7. It feels so good to be able to write “normal” news. And on July 4, I was finally able to take most of a whole day off. That felt good, too.
Going forward, this space will provide a look back at the news of the week, along with some stats and, if there’s something big coming up in the week ahead, a short preview. We’ve been told by readers and members they’d appreciate a weekly recap from RiverheadLOCAL, since the volume of news and information can be overwhelming. So we’ll collect the stories of this week and publish story links/previews here. They are ordered according to page views, in descending order.
Before getting to this week’s recap, I want to take this opportunity to say a word of thanks to the people who use our site to stay informed, to the businesses who support local journalism with their advertising dollars — please support them with your consumer dollars. Thank you, too, to the hundreds of people who’ve shown their support by becoming RiverheadLOCAL members. And the emails and notes of encouragement I’ve received have been so uplifting and empowering. Thank you!
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This week’s roundup
On to the recap. This week, RiverheadLOCAL had 111,956 page views from 44,101 unique visitors. (Source: Google Analytics)
Here are this week’s top stories (minus weather stories, air quality advisories and obituaries):
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