WALB has been on top of this fast-compounding disaster since the coronavirus’ outset, and like nearly every other newsroom in the country, doing it remotely. Of its 70 staffers, only eight or nine are in the building at any given time now, including Austin himself.
All of its reporters are working from home with LiveU units. Most are multimedia journalists shooting and editing their own stories, sometimes doing standups in front of their own apartment buildings and avoiding field reporting as much as possible for safety reasons.
But remote reporting has its challenges in rural Georgia. “If we are inside city limits or close to them, [reporters] probably have good, high-speed internet, but in some deep rural areas the technology is just not there yet,” Austin says.
