Dealing with the news during this time

I wasn’t ready for last week.

I’m Nnot going to lie here and say that I was.

The news on the COVID19 virus effecting Montana really started to hit the fan Sunday, March 14, with the announcement of all of our schools closing and the news rolled downhill from there on. Now, a few days and lots of Netflix series later, the news has somewhat died down.

But for how long?

After we printed last week’s PCN we decided that it was in everyone’s interest that we close the doors of our shop for the time being and conduct all our business via phone or email. It is important that we continue to cover the news and if you missed it, we reported and published 11 stories on our website last week under “Breaking News,” trying to keep our readers as up to date as possible (those stories will also be rehashed and hopefully updated in this week’s PCN, March 25, 2020, Vol. 99, No. 5). For the foreseeable future, we will continue to write daily stories and post them on the PCN website (phillipscountynews.com) as well as publish the paper each Wednesday just like we have for the past 98 years. We aren’t exactly sure what either will look like in the coming weeks, but we are dedicated to doing so. We will also have our office closed until at least next Monday.

A lot of people around the county, and the country, are irate with what they deem as “fake news” and “the media” and I understand that. There is a lot of hysteria in the world right now and in the day and age when clicks matter, there are a lot of sensational headlines begging for your click with what is known as “click bait.” Here at the PCN, we are attempting to report on this virus as accurately as possible, with no opinion interjected (unless otherwise labeled as such) and as quickly as possible. We might not always get it right, but that is always our intention.

Thanks for reading, be safe, and aloha.