Dear newsrooms: I took a day off during the coronavirus news cycle and your staff should, too

Everything is strange now.

Your living room may be your office. Your dining room may be your child’s classroom.

Photos of you and your friends gathered for a birthday party or after-work social now look like they’re from another dimension — though it was still your reality just a month ago.

You have more family time than ever with your young ones at home or no contact at all with your senior relatives in a care center.

You may no longer have a job at the restaurant that just a few weeks ago was prepping for March Madness.

You may be scared to go to your job, deemed essential by the authorities, because that means being around other people.

I’m one of the lucky ones whose job in media is considered essential and can be done remotely.

Many journalists around the country and world are doing the same, covering the relentless updates of the coronavirus pandemic from their home offices. Everything has felt weird since we switched to remote work two weeks ago so that we may “flatten the curve” of infections by distancing ourselves from one another.

But I did something recently that helped bring back some normal and I’d like to suggest that all newsrooms try this: Give each of your staffers one day off during the week, and rotate it among them as they continue to cover the crisis. You know they’ve worked enough to have earned it.

My team at America Amplified was thoughtful and kind enough to encourage me to take a day off and it was the first time things made sense.

I didn’t have a routine for working at home; weekends felt like a weekday.

But a day off? That I knew how to do.

I felt like I had permission to not think about work, that I could spend the time doing things I wanted to do (which included bike riding and making dumplings).

Newsrooms: Your staff needs this short break, for their mind and health. They need the moment to adjust to their current lives, they need to know it’s OK to step away (because you know they’re expecting to be on call on weekends).

It helped me and I’m only involved on the fringes of the daily news cycle.

If you are already practicing some form of this, great! If not, try it.

I know it will be hard on an already-strained system. But if everyone knows that this is how they can get through it together, they’ll make it happen.

The news won’t stop, but it won’t end either.

Show your newsroom the importance of self-care.

Kathy Lu is the digital and social media editor for America Amplified, a community engagement journalism effort funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. She is based in Kansas City, Missouri. You can reach Kathy at kathy@americaamplified.org.