It’s been a while since I last wrote to you, and these days a lot can change in just a moment.
In the past months, our community has had to adjust to changing behaviors and expectations over and over, from wondering whether it’s safe to visit friends, worrying about our bank accounts, or reexamining our unconscious notions of race and justice.
It’s a lot. It’s tiring. At the end of many days, I feel like crawling into a trashy novel and losing track of reality for a bit. And that’s okay, but reality doesn’t go away. It waits for us. As confirmed cases continue to rise in Utah and elsewhere, it looks certain that the COVID-19 pandemic will continue to be a part of our circumstances for a long time. Discussions of how to address police misconduct are just ramping up, and conversations about personal experiences of racism and abuse are spilling out with greater and greater intensity and frequency. And then there’s an election this year? Yikes.
Here at the paper, we’re focused on stamina, working on providing Moab with the best information for the long-haul. Rather than quick bites of the day’s most salacious gossip, we’re digging deep to connect with local organizations and regional experts to put every story in context for our readers. We’re following issues consistently so our coverage tells the full story, rather than dropping an article on a local conflict and then never mentioning the issue again. We’re doing original and enterprising work, not just covering public meetings or press releases. And while we do all that, we’re connecting with our amazing readers online and in print to make sure that our resources are working for you and in the public interest.
I keep reminding myself that all of this work is a marathon, not a sprint. The Moab Sun News published 51 issues a year. Each is, bit by bit, moving us a little further along just like every day is pushing us all a little further toward a bright, interesting future.
We couldn’t do any of this without the support of our community, so I want to take a moment to say thank you to all of the people who have signed up for our e-editions or made a tax-deductible contribution to our work. Your contributions and messages of support have meant the world to us. It might seem like a small thing to each of you, but it makes a huge difference not only to those of us at the paper: the importance of local journalism to ensuring transparency and accountability in local government and elsewhere is essential in these times.
Here at the Sun, we’re committed to keeping the paper itself accountable as well. In the coming weeks, we’ll be checking in with readers to see how the paper can help everyone make sense of this quickly-moving era. Not only that, we want to make sure we’re helping readers connect with the services, events and information that make life worth living: the arts, science, culture and our amazing public spaces. If you have thoughts, feel free to reach out to me at editor@moabsunnews.com any time.
If you’d like to receive weekly e-editions of the paper emailed directly to you or would like to contribute to the Moab Sun News to support local journalism, please check out our website at www.moabsunnews.com or email editor@moabsunnews.com
“We couldn’t do any of this without the support of our community, so I want to take a moment to say thank you to all of the people who have signed up for our e-editions or made a tax-deductible contribution to our work.”
– Maggie McGuire
