Our Views: Thank You Lewis County, for Hanging in There With Us

Posted

It’s hard to believe it’s been just over a month since much of the nation paused public life in an effort to slow the spread of the deadly COVID-19 virus through our communities. 

The past five weeks or so have been long, and filled with uncertainty, fear, grief and for many, near-constant changes to their daily lives.

Here in Lewis County, it’s been the same story. Many of our businesses have closed their doors, but are adapting to serve their customers with online and phone ordering, curbside delivery, or in the case of restaurants, drive through and take-and-bake options. 

In the past weeks, The Chronicle has also had to make changes to continue bringing you the best local news we can. First, we shrunk our sports section, repurposing the pages to focus on how businesses in Lewis County are staying open during the pandemic. We’ve had to downsize some departments, reduce hours and most recently reduce our page count. 

When we saw our main source of revenue — advertising — drop in early March due to necessary cutbacks and cancelations among our customers, we were forced to do an incredibly difficult thing — ask for help. 

The outpouring of support we’ve received from our loyal readers has been truly heartwarming. 



Among the much-appreciated monetary donations, new subscribers, subscriptions purchased for friends and neighbors and advertising buys, we’ve received wonderfully thoughtful handwritten notes — which for Chronicle employees continuing to work through unprecedented circumstances have been some of the most rewarding contributions. 

We are encouraged and reaffirmed that Lewis County values its newspaper and the work we do. Thank you, from all of us. 

Time and again, our community rises together to meet challenges. Every day we report on groups organizing efforts to shop local, donate food, time and money, make masks, distill sanitizer and keep everyone’s heads afloat until life can resume on a more normal level. 

If you know of a news story we should be covering, a business in need of a feature, a volunteer working hard or anything else deserving of a shoutout, contact our newsroom at news@chronline.com