Vox Corona

     With the emergence of COVID-19 in the United States, we, as a country, are experiencing a traumatic economic downfall. On March 13, President Trump declared  the pandemic as a national emergency and since then, over 30 million Americans have lost their jobs and 22 million Americans have filed for unemployment. Our nation has not seen job loss levels on this scale since the Great Depression and our economy is shrinking at its fastest rate since 2008 . The image    below displays the US claims for unemployment insurance over the last fifty years, the spike in 2020 is extremely obvious.      Small businesses around the country struggle to find financial stability, and the local newspaper business is certainly no exception. In fact, while job postings in general have fallen by 24% since February 1, job postings in the media and news industry have fallen by 35% . Furthermore, an estimated 360,000 employees of US news media companies ha...

 Regardless of if it’s due to a smaller range of topics to report on or that the demand for reliable, in-depth reporting due to COVID-19 has increased, investigative news  has surged in the past few weeks . Whether it's through requesting a bigger workload from journalists or moving reporting responsibilities around, news platforms across the country have been focusing their efforts on publishing investigative articles about the global pandemic. The Denver Post and The Washington Post , for example, have reassigned a large group of their sports writing staff to coronavirus efforts. The changes are temporary due to a " story of such unprecedented magnitude ." Beyond sports, a viewership tsunami has hit many national news platforms as people search for answers in any way they can. In March, ABC’s “World News Tonight” saw a 21% increase in viewership compared to the show’s average, and a pattern drastically different from the normal “The Bachelor” and “American Idol”...

I don’t know about you, but given the current COVID-19 pandemic, I’d think twice before going to a barber shop or sitting in a crowded movie theater, at least until cases die down. Federal guidelines mandate that a state should only reopen when the amount of new cases has steadily decreased from two weeks prior . The guidelines are not mandatory, as the Trump Administration left the decision to reopen mostly up to governors. And for some of them, waiting longer to get back to the way things were just isn’t worth it.  The majority of states that have reopened thus far do not meet federal guidelines for doing so . Considering that the majority of states in the US have reopened in some capacity, that’s a huge risk for many Americans. Out of 30 states that have reopened in some capacity, only 9 actually met the federal guidelines. With testing shortages rampant, it’s hard to accurately measure the true damage this could cause, but most experts say that reopening too soon could ca...

Spanish-Language Media Bridges the Information Gap In the midst of a national pandemic, it is more important than ever that every American has access to comprehensive health information. Government COVID reports, however, are often initially—or exclusively—provided in just one language: English. This poses a distinct challenge for non-English speaking Americans. Additionally, many mainstream media outlets are not dedicating significant coverage to issues pertaining to specific subsets of the population. To overcome this hurdle and ensure that Spanish-speaking Americans stay well-informed on important and relevant news stories, Spanish-language media has risen to bridge the information gap. The federal government has failed to make crucial public health information widely accessible. When the CDC published a set of coronavirus guidelines in early March, it took them three days to post the same report in Spanish. Daily White House reports are only available in English, and the Spa...

The coronavirus has mutated. Not only as a virus, but as an idea. Since the first coronavirus infection in the United States, the virus has transformed from a foreign issue to a source of numerous homegrown conspiracy theories. Joseph Pierre  defines a conspiracy theory as "types of beliefs that normal people have, and unlike delusions, aren't considered to be symptoms of mental illness."   Conspiracy theories  rarely rely on  evidence. Instead, they often develop in times of crisis, especially when people are in need of knowledge and safety. The coronavirus pandemic has proven to be one of these times, as people throughout the world find themselves glomming on to any information that they can get. The introduction of the digital age allows everyone to have all the information they would ever need at their disposal. However, this has led to a rise of non-traditional outlets that people may turn to for information.   Even in the last few years, t...

News outlets have a lot of responsibilities, especially during campaigns. In addition to playing the "watchdog" role (exposing wrongdoing, often on the part of public officials or elites) and providing a method for candidates to get their  own  word out about themselves, the media has to (carefully) direct voters to what  it  thinks is the right choice. Thomas E. Patterson traces this third responsibility back to the 1968 presidential race, after which the party institutions gave up the right to nominate their candidates, and primary votes started to become commonplace. At that point, the floodgates opened, so to speak. Anyone and everyone could make a bid at the presidency, but how were those bids supposed to reach voters' ears? The media, Patterson, claims, stepped into that role – a constructive role that is fundamentally political – even though it was not set up to do so. [ Read Patterson, "The Miscast Institution" ] Now, on top of all that mo...