A State of Emergency came into effect on Monday (Mar. 16). across Victoria following the Coronavirus outbreak.

There is an unprecedented amount of event cancellations throughout this region, and across the State.

Your Local Paper and Melbourne Observer come to you again this week in print and online, with an expanded coverage of the latest developments. This week’s issue (Wed., Mar. 18) is being distributed as per normal.

Circumstances are changing by the hour. We will endeavour to bring you both the printed edition and our online edition.

However, this business must be run on strict commercial principles. A major newspaper is a large financial undertaking, and we must be responsible on how we conduct ourselves. (We do not have the financial resources of some others).

If business closures and event cancellations result in severe drops in paid advertising, we may be forced to put our print edition on hold. It is impossible to predict. If we are forced not to print some issues, full adjustments will be applied to all advertisers’ accounts.

It may be that the print facility that we use could be temporarily closed if the print staff are ordered to go home.

We must be mindful too of the health and safety of our distribution team.

All that said, we will endeavour to maintain our print editions throughout this crisis, however it may well be that we are only able to publish online for a while.

We will keep you up-to-date through our websites and Facebook pages. Please stay healthy.

-Editor