The secret to earned media coverage during COVID-19

Imagine, if you can, a time when most of humanity had never heard of coronavirus.  Although it may seem like that era of blissful ignorance existed sometime last decade, it was only several short months ago.

Since then, everyone (and I mean literally every single person in the world) has undergone profound, jarring and life-altering changes in some way in a very short period of time.  Yet, these seismic changes will have lasting implications on every aspect of our lives for year to come.

Intensified and accelerated trends

For journalists, who help to make sense of the world around us, this change has required most of them to rapidly learn on the fly as events take on their own relentless momentum.  Often, this necessitates quickly shifting from covering one aspect of the crisis to another. This includes putting into context the economic implications COVID-19 has wrought in our communities, the complexity surrounding infection rates, contact tracing and testing infrastructure across states, and the psychological, emotional and physical health challenges of an entirely new work paradigm.