Community response: in print and online

W
e want to thank our readers for continuing to turn to the News Letter Journal to access the information that is most important to all of us while this pandemic impacts
our community.
While this crisis is something that nobody is truly prepared for, we want to assure this community and its
citizens that we stand ready to produce the most positive and
productive line of communication to help not only guide you through this time, but also continue to appreciate the many gifts we enjoy because we live in Weston County.
This crisis will impact us, but we are confident it will not define us, and the News Letter Journal is committed to using the various resources at our disposal to strike the appropriate balance of keeping you informed of the ever-changing landscape regarding the COVID-19 pandemic and the role it is playing in our
community, while also producing stories, photos and advertisements that allow us to focus on something besides the pandemic and appreciate the blessings we are offered when we choose to live in Newcastle and Weston County.
Over the course of the past week, we have been inundated with requests from businesses, government
agencies and other organizations to put announcements out regarding their response to COVID-19, and we hope the format we have created will allow us to present this information to the community in an organized and informative manner - both in print
and online.
We are grateful to those businesses, organizations and government
agencies that have already chosen to use this format to get important messages out to the community, and pleased that we have the ability to offer local entities the opportunity to get important announcements in front you each week in the newspaper — while also putting it out in an online forum through which we can make daily updates and adjustments
if needed.
The format we created is designed to ensure readers can easily find the messages because of the headline “COVID19 and your community,” which makes it easier for you to
navigate the information being provided by all of the different entities in this week’s edition. It also ensures that all COVID19 messaging that we are asked to publish is ‘equal’  between businesses and agencies to the best of our ability — in keeping with the “we’re all in this together” philosophy we encouraged this community to follow in last week’s editorial.
All of the ads designed in this format have text that is presented in a large and clear font. We have set these parameters to ensure the highest degree of readability for our most vulnerable residents, who are often advanced in age and have difficulty reading fine print. These residents are also our most loyal readers, and the least likely to receive announcements online or through social media, so we thank those entities who are working with us to keep them informed so they can best protect themselves while the virus runs its course.
We believe this format gives our local entities an opportunity to work together to get through the current crisis, and allows us to organize the important messaging businesses, organizations and government
agencies need to put in front of our readers on a weekly basis. This will be an important partnership between the NLJ and the advertisers we serve, because it will allow us to keep the community informed for the duration of this disruption — regardless of how long that may be.
The NLJ has offered digital
distribution of the press releases being sent to us at no charge to all those entities who partner with us in this effort to establish a long-term and reliable conduit of information for the residents of Weston County. The press releases that correspond with the ads in this week’s issue are posted and updated under the special COVID-19 INFO tab that has been created on newslj.com.
Please check our website daily, and click on the tab to see new
announcements and
important updates.
We know the activities of the past couple of weeks continue to create confusion in our lives, and we want to assure our readers that we are
confident in our ability to provide accurate and valuable information to you in a timely manner to help you understand what is happening to this community in regards to the COVID-19 pandemic, and also ensure the disruption in all of our lives produces the least amount of anxiety and hardship possible.
This is what we’ve trained for, and the mix of talented and
experienced individuals at the News Letter Journal are ready to answer the call and provide this community with the professional communication
services and products to help Newcastle and Weston County
come out the other side of this crisis stronger than ever and poised for a epic rebound.