by Peter Weinberger pweinberger@claremont-courier.com

As Claremont gets deeper and deeper into the coronavirus health crisis, the COURIER will continue to publish local news until this mess has passed. Many of you have contacted us wanting answers to difficult coronavirus questions, and our staff is making every effort to get that information as quickly as possible while working within the social distance orders that are in place.

Please keep in mind if you call our office—it’s closed to walk-in traffic—we will answer phones from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., Monday through Friday. Given that we are juggling so many things, the best way to contact us for now is via email. Our complete contact list is published on our website.

The print edition will continue to come in the mail each Friday, news racks will be filled and supermarkets, such as Vons, have the COURIER for sale near Starbucks inside the store.

We are updating the website and Facebook every day, often multiple times, but the number of stories depends on the news. Our staff continues to focus on local developments, since national news is well covered by other media.

Please keep an open eye for local videos I am producing. If anything, I’m attempting to give readers a visual sense of what life is like in Claremont. Editing video is enormously time consuming, so expect three videos a week for now.

We continue to receive questions from readers concerned about local Claremont cases of coronavirus. Like us, they want more information about who has been infected. That information is not released by health officials, so at this point, the best we can do is report how many have the virus.

Like other Claremont businesses, the COURIER has been impacted financially and I’m working hard to tap federal programs for help. But that will take time as millions of other businesses do the same thing. We are fortunate that many of our advertisers are still publishing, but it’s still not at the level of previous years. The best thing readers can do to help is subscribe or donate if possible.

Finally, I have never been more proud and impressed working with the COURIER staff through these hard times. Our staffers continue to get up each day, juggling work from home and the office, and heading out to the community—without risking their health—to report on our small Claremont community.

We are developing new ways to work together, with a single focus on publishing up-to-date news on every medium available. All this is being done while attempting to manage personal lives in this new reality. It’s very strenuous and emotional work. And right now, there’s no end in sight.

Thank you once again for supporting the Claremont COURIER. We appreciate all the words of encouragement from our readers. It really helps us! Stay safe out there.