By Crystal Gwizdala and Patrick Sochacki
UNIVERSITY CENTER, NEW YORK CITY – We left for New York City at 5 a.m. on Wednesday, March 11. The goal was to learn everything we could at the College Media Association (CMA) conference and to compete against other college newsrooms nationally. And we were ready to represent Delta and win awards.
The COVID-19 outbreak never left our minds. No restrictions had been set yet, but as members of the media, we were constantly checking for updates. Universities were beginning to place international travel bans on non-essential travel, but not Delta. We were optimistic and we were grateful for the privilege to attend the conference.
As we’re waiting to board our flight at the Detroit Wayne Airport, we found out that the Iron Reporter challenge was canceled. The hours of research our team had invested into turning around a compelling news package was now pointless. Two of the five pre-convention workshops were also canceled.
Thursday morning greeted us with more session cancelations. Three of us were randomly selected to attend tours of major media outlets: ProPublica, Democracy Now! and VICE. All media tours were canceled.
In the Marriott Marquis elevator, we read the news story about Broadway shows getting canceled starting at 5 p.m. that day. A guest who shared the elevator with us muttered, “guess I’m out of $400,” as he plodded into the lobby. Our fellow reporter, Jordan Green, was heartbroken about missing Beetlejuice.
“I was SO SO close to living the dream 😤😤,” Green wrote in a Facebook message.
By the afternoon, New York governor Andrew Cuomo put in place a ban of gatherings over 500 people and CMA honored it, despite only having 318 attendees. The conference originally had 787 registrants. The conference now ended on Friday at 5 p.m. instead of Saturday at 12:30 p.m.
A few of us registered for the Photo Shoot-Out competition and we now only had one evening to snap an award-winning photo. Michael Pieper, our creative director, captured the class favorite tie photo based on the theme: (you guessed it) coronavirus.
(Michael Pieper/Creative Director)
Despite even more cancellations on Friday, we were still able to pack our schedules (it helped that some of Saturday’s sessions were now crammed into Friday).
We set out to win awards, and we did. In addition to receiving the Apple Award for the Photo Shoot-Out, the Delta Collegiate placed in the following categories at the Friday, March 13 ceremony:
Best Tweet, second place
Best Newscast, The Delta Beat, third place
Saturday morning sang a somber tone. Of the 182 scheduled sessions, nearly half were canceled. I’d like to reiterate that we were incredibly grateful for the privilege to attend; yet, it felt like we had been robbed. We worried we wouldn’t be allowed to return home.
Since the conference ended early, we had time before we needed to be at the airport. So, we did what journalists do best: we reported.
New York City’s pulse, March 14
of staff who attended CMA NYC 2020.
We poked our heads into the Manhattan Mall on Saturday, around 1 p.m. It was about as busy as the Fashion Square Mall on a Tuesday morning – a few people ambling through the cavernous halls.
“It’s usually packed [in here],” says mall security guard Allison Dunham. “This is a ghost town right now; even outside, it’s a ghost town.”
Dunham noticed something else during her security rounds: many of the homeless people were missing.
“Every morning I got the same ones, doing the same thing,” says Dunham. “Right here ‘round the corner, there’s a little thing where the heat comes up; they usually sleep on that. […] They’re gone. They’re gone.”
Ex-veteran Mark Lodger, now homeless, hasn’t noticed any homeless missing. He shares his thoughts on the virus.
“[It’s] really not much more than the flu, man,” says Lodger. “I actually know they’re idiots for wearing the masks. It’s not spreading out of the mask. […] You might as well wear a gas mask when you walk around; it’s not gonna protect you.”
Dunham resisted the idea of self-quarantining to prevent the spread of the virus, saying it was martial law.
“I don’t wanna cause no problems, man, but I’m gonna go outside, just because. I’m not in jail. […] I’m very strong-willed. You can’t tell me to stay home; that’s just– that’s sick.”
As of March 20, all of New York is under quarantine.
“We are so small we can do nothing; we just ask God why it is happening,” says Younghee Song, secretary of the NY Manhattan Proclamation Missionary Team
As we trudged down the steps into the subway station at 34th Street and 7th Avenue, NE corner, I felt chills come over me. The station was empty. I saw a custodial worker in a neon vest descend the steps across the station, sweeping up microscopic specs of garbage.
It felt almost post-apocalyptic – I dodgedly glanced around, hoping zombies or ghouls wouldn’t come running toward me.
We opted for a taxi to the airport.
Taxi driver Eric Opokuware echoed Dunham’s remarks on New York City becoming a ghost town. As for the novel coronavirus, Opokuware said, “I take it out of my mind.”
“I’ve been flying for over 12 years and I’ve never seen it like this,” says Meghan Schulz, Delta Airline flight attendant. “[…] The flights are all like this – they’re wide open.”
Even after 9/11, it had never been like this, Schulz added, recalling what her senior co-workers shared with her.
Upon returning to the Tri-Cities, the Collegiate staff who went to New York City chose to self-quarantine as a precaution.
