Vital reporting of a difficult year

The paper had been published every week without fail since January 2 1858 — even war had not stopped the presses from rolling. Coronavirus might though.

Lockdown had just been announced and our biggest fear as a business was that advertising would drop to nothing. Would the newspaper survive? Would our families and ourselves survive?

The office was eerily silent as we considered the immediate future as a business, as a community and as individuals.

Most of us knew in our hearts we had to fight to continue and pretty swiftly the Government announced its Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme, which meant that staff could be furloughed — a move without which we would never have got through the leanest period in our history.

The Government and the NHS also booked advertising campaigns, largely advising the public of fast-changing rules and regulations, and people continued to place family announcements.

We devised a plan involving a mix of staff being furloughed, some working part-time, some from home and others from our town centre office — after all, you can’t claim to be a community newspaper if you are not available for your readers. Some staff sacrificed holidays to ensure we produced as good a paper as we possibly could.

It was vital we reported local Covid figures, what was happening in GP surgeries, at the hospital, how to get tested, etc, as well as the positive stories about the fantastic work being carried out by key workers inside and outside the NHS, those going the extra mile to help others in need or carrying out charity and voluntary work. This was a situation which was rapidly evolving and people needed to be kept informed.

It was also a priority to keep readers up to date with what was happening in our town away from Covid — at the council, crimes that were being committed, and what sports, if any, were still being played.

A new approach was also needed as the paper was bound to be thinner with little advertising to support it and wages still to pay, as well as virtually all forms of live entertainment suspended — meaning little in the way of previews or reviews — and very little sport to report on.

So we introduced history features taken from our archives and often suggested by members of the public or groups and societies, and we replicated this in our sports section, delving into the archives and focusing on some of the more unusual stories from Rotherham’s past.

Special deals for advertisers were brought in when we began our Restarting Rotherham project with the aim of making the voices of the borough’s businesses louder as the first lockdown ended in June. People needed positives in their lives.

We worried: would our sales plummet? However, despite social media, audience-wise at the Rotherham Advertiser we’re bigger than ever because we are trusted. We are not the here today, gone tomorrow fake news of social media, and we like to think — after 162 years — we have earned the right to call ourselves a credible platform for news and advertising.

That is why each week we still sell 16,000 copies of the paper, which is read by 50,000 people, we reach more than 100,000 people online and have more than 30,000 followers on our various Twitter feeds and 25,000 on Facebook.

These people have stuck with us throughout the pandemic — despite the thinner papers — and we want to thank every reader and advertiser for their support.

We won’t pretend it’s not been difficult. It has and it still is. For everyone. With a route out of lockdown announced though, we aim to help Rotherham prepare for a brighter future and to help it restart again next month.