Al Jazeera Covid Coverage a Year in the Making

As we approach the first anniversary of Covid-19 crippling the entire world, it is important to acknowledge how much has been done throughout this past year by news organizations. Many had to work from home and out of the traditional spheres of journalism while still being expected to produce constant, 24/7 news coverage held to the same standard as pre-covid reporting.

With a global news organization such as Al Jazeera, I can only imagine the struggle to work in a closed-down world while also reporting on all the continents. Every country has handled the virus so differently, so to report on all of that sounds like a very tall order.

In looking at how they cover the virus now, they seem to stick to their normal coverage tactics in the sense that they are everywhere all over the world.

This is what today's front page of their online Covid section looks like, which shows a variety of news from a variety of countries. Another interesting aspect of their Covid coverage is that they include a multitude of reporting, such as their financial reporting, opinion reporting, and photo essays. I like this variety of news underneath one section dedicated to Covid because it allows for the whole story of the pandemic to be told rather than just publishing hard news.

Here you can see a snippet of their financial articles that they post through Bloomberg as well as a hard news piece and opinion piece.

Using web.archive.org I took a look at what the front page looked like on this exact day a year ago.

On March 11th, 2020, this is the first thing you would have seen if you went to their main site. As you can see, they are still covering a ton of countries, but this particular front page seems to be more European-centric since that was the hot spot of the virus at the time. It is interesting to see how they were reporting exactly a year ago before they had an entire section dedicated to the Covid-19 virus.

I think their reporting on it now is certainly more global than when it was just affecting a few countries and they are certainly trying to get as many angles and stories as they can to fill their Covid-19 section.