Louisville News Friends: Keep grinding

Louisville News Friends:

Keep on grinding. Keep telling your viewers and readers you're covering the stories they say you're ignoring. Keep reminding them that in most cases, we can only report what we hear from official sources like law-enforcement and/or families. Keep telling them that just because they saw something all over Facebook, that doesn't make it immediately reportable.

We are in unusual, difficult times, for sure, but such a moment gives us an opportunity to shine, to remind our local communities of what we do best and why they should trust us. Our industry is as perfect as any other in that we are far from it. We will continue to be accused of intentionally lying, that so much of what we report is fake news or a part of a larger conspiracy. We will continue to be accused of trying to promote a particular narrative.

This is all OK and is more of a reflection of our critics than it is of the important, honest work we are all doing every day.

We've all been going hard since the first days of COVID, and are continuing to do career-defining work with Breonna Taylor, all while working remotely or under some other unfamiliar circumstances that we couldn't have imagined just a year ago.

And now we're trying to prepare to cover the state's marquee event, the Kentucky Derby, in just 15 days, all while bracing for what is likely to come shortly afterward from the attorney general's office.

Keep on grinding, friends. Keep working your sources and getting those firsts and those exclusives. Keep asking the hard questions and reporting the essential truths. Your competitors are doing the same things at the other outlets around town. Leave them alone on social; we're all in this together and I've seen a few journos dogging other shops on Twitter. Just stop. Everyone's hustling.

Many people don't realize this but Louisville is among the most competitive four-station markets in America. It is also ground zero for this racial reckoning that we're currently witnessing. Louisville is in the middle of a moment like this city has never seen. We are the real-time historians our community is turning to. Let's all get it right.