From the editor: Thanks to you, our readers, for bearing with us

Easy: Our readers. Closely followed by our employees.

When things get tough in this business — and they are plenty tough right now, don’t worry — that always becomes clear.

The challenges of newspapering, and news-website-ing, in the 2020s are well-known. Revenue challenges and a changing technology and media landscape mean fewer journalists, but the mission gets bigger, not smaller, as “local news” takes in more and more to growing digital audiences.

Readers want, need and expect immediacy in coverage of breaking news, and depth and thoughtfulness in the coverage of larger, more complex themes. I’m old enough to call that “fulfilling the public trust,” and that’s what we are determined to keep doing. The Arizona Daily Star won a Pulitzer for covering local news in 1984, and that remains a meaningful standard for this news organization. Some of us who were here then are still here now. Fortunately, we have the help of a brilliant new generation of journalists.

But over the past few days, all of those existential worries faded to background noise in the face of a much more immediate threat. Our company, Lee Enterprises, which owns the Star and publishes it in a joint operating agreement with the Gannett Corp., suffered a catastrophic systems breakdown at a data center in Indiana. Friday, Lee CEO Kevin Mowbray, in an email to employees, disclosed that the huge outage was the result of a cyberattack.

The outage affected both hardware and software. Key systems in every area of our business, including news, production and advertising, were knocked out. On Tuesday, some 67 of Lee’s local newspapers across the country were not able to publish a printed edition. The damage has been grievous and ongoing the rest of the past week.

We were fortunate. We published a paper on that first day and have continued with a strong local news and sports report both in print and online. But our paper has been different than usual — smaller, and reconfigured.

Our readers, of course, have noticed the tighter newspapers and have missed some of the things they’re used to. But here’s the great thing — when they realized what we were up against, they have been nothing but supportive.

The interactions I’ve had with readers have been heartwarming and validating.

Rick Rappaport, who lives on Tucson’s west side, is a regular contributor to the Star’s Letters to the Editor and Guest Opinions. He had inquired about a Guest Opinion, but upon reading about our systems issues, he responded, “A bit embarrassed to send that email asking about my ‘me me me’ Opinion when you’re in the throes of something very serious. Hope you can resolve it! Kind regards, Rick.”

Sally Horn wrote, “What happened to your sports schedule? ... I’m a sports freak (at 87 years of age) and was so disappointed!”

After I wrote to her and explained what was amiss, she wrote back, “Thanks for your response! ... Sounds like mayhem to me! Better luck tomorrow.”

Judith Bischoff also wrote to ask why the TV sports schedule for Tuesday did not run. When I explained what had happened, she wrote back, “Thank you for your clear response. We will bear with you. Judy”

Readers. You’re the best.

And as Judy and the rest of you bear with us, we will Bear Down, in the best Wildcat tradition, to get things fixed.

Unfortunately, today’s paper is also smaller than usual, but we have taken every possible step to save local news content. We’re making progress on fixing our technical issues. But we’re not quite out of the woods yet.

This week, my mind has inescapably returned to an awful day in July of 1982 when an explosion ripped through the Star’s plant on South Park Avenue, critically injuring seven people, including General Manager Frank Delehanty, Managing Editor Frank Johnson, Chief Photographer Jack Sheaffer, and Production Manager Wayne Bean. I arrived for work that morning five minutes after it had happened, witnessing close friends and colleagues Delehanty, Johnson and Sheaffer being loaded into ambulances. Delehanty died from his injuries.

That day, a shocked staff pulled together and produced a newspaper. We had to take it to Phoenix to print as our press was disabled, but we got it done. I have that paper here on my desk as I write, and I’m still proud of the staff that produced it.

It’s a sign of the times that this week’s outage, so far away from Tucson, can still have such wide-ranging effects, including here. But our staff has been no less steadfast in working to produce the newspaper that you’re holding right now, if you’re reading this in print. The other thing that’s different from 1982, of course, is that we and our readers have Tucson.com. All week long, our online presentation of local news has been as complete as ever — something else for this staff to be proud of, and for our readers to use as they need and enjoy.

Later this week, when this particular difficulty is over, we’ll be back to be fretting about the larger issues that face the news business. But for now, I’m grateful to our amazing staff — and to the best part of the business, our readers.

Thanks for your patience and your loyalty.