The Brown and White Continues to Publish During Pandemic

By 11 a.m. a contingency plan was in place. An hour later, it was needed: Lehigh announced it was moving classes online for two weeks. The next day the university extended remote learning to the rest of the semester.

Epstein was skiing in the Colorado Mountains with spotty cell phone reception when Lehigh made the announcement. When he reached an area with service he saw the email and his phone “exploded” with messages through text, Slack and social media.

In The Brown and White’s first full department meeting on Thursday, March 12, Epstein says, different ideas for publishing were floated, including to continue with publication twice per week but with half the number of pages, or once per week but double the normal number of pages. Design editor Nicole Walker '20, who was having microphone issues on the Zoom call with eight other editors and Veto, texted Wolman, prodding him to speak up.

“I didn't want to break the tradition of printing twice a week because I know that's been something integral to The Brown and White since its inception,” Walker says.

Wolman relayed her concerns to the group.

“I just keep thinking about 126 years,” Veto recalls Wolman saying. “Do we want to be that group that puts a stop to that? Let's think about how we can open up our content avenues and get more creative.’”

They quickly decided they would continue publishing two days each week.

The image that stuck in Epstein’s head was the editor’s lounge on the top floor of the newsroom, which has print copies from recent semesters. He’d like to return in the fall and see a seamless continuation of the print product.

“It would be, if you didn't look at the actual headlines, like nothing ever happened,” Epstein says. “Sure, if you read the news, you'll know what happened. But as far as, at first glance, we never stopped printing, everything was business as usual and I think that determination carried everyone forward.”

Even before Lehigh decided to remotely hold classes, The Brown and White had planned for the rest of the semester to be online-only in case of a worst-case scenario.

“We thought it was best just to prepare for the worst case scenario, which is that we would be all [remote],” Epstein says. “It was better to prepare for the absolute worst case than to have nothing or to have it done halfway and then be grasping for straws. We were definitely prepared for being remote the rest of the semester, which I think helped us.”

The conversation for the editors centered on what the content and workflow would look like going forward. With a staff of over 150 students working remotely and physically apart from one another, workflow becomes extremely important, Veto says. Then, they began to review production nights, step-by-step, which included figuring out how story budget meetings would be held and stories would be edited. They also discussed how reporting, designing and taking photographs would be accomplished.

Veto says they realized right away they were going to get a deluge of breaking news, and knowing that, they needed to prepare. The work required a bigger team, and they weren’t going to isolate themselves into the typical sections of a newspaper, such as news, life and sports.

“It was all editors, all reporters, all hands on deck covering life in the coronavirus,” Veto says.

The Brown and White’s first stories after Lehigh transitioned to remote learning included national news and the impact the coronavirus was having on the campus, its students and faculty and its community, such as students experiencing the country’s first containment zone in New Rochelle, New York, and students and faculty adjusting to online classes. They also posted Pennsylvania news stories, such as the first coronavirus death in the state as well as the impact on the state’s primary election.

An online transportation photo gallery was also posted, featuring images in airports around the country and in London and the New York City subway, which were taken by newspaper staff and Lehigh community members. They also launched a city documentation series on Instagram, which Esptein says will appear on their website, that featured staff photos documenting empty cities such as Boston, New York, San Francisco and Minneapolis.

Epstein says they’ve actually been producing more content because of the surge in news and taking the opportunity of covering stories they wouldn’t normally cover but can with a staff now spread across the globe.

“In the last couple weeks, we've completely expanded our coverage into something that we might never have the opportunity to do again,” Epstein says. “And that's something that I reminded the editors and the staff a lot at the beginning. Yes, this is a horrible situation. But at the same time we have the opportunity to do something that we've never been able to do before and hopefully we never have to do again because we would never want this situation again, but while we're in it, let's make the most of our staff being stretched across the world. We've done a great job of that so far.”

Additionally, The Brown and White is relying on crowdsourcing content, whether it be students at-large or alumni. They’re working on adding a form to their website’s homepage that will allow users to submit their story and visual content.