In a south Louisiana bayou parish, “local” news takes on a new meaning. Instead of national or world news, the Lafourche Gazette employs three reporters and features grade-school sports coverage of southern Lafourche Parish, community announcements and state government updates piecemealed from other papers in the state. 

One of those reporters is Casey Gisclair, a mass communication alumnus and former Reveille reporter. 

When accepted an offer in 2019 to write for the Gazette — the only newspaper that circulates through his hometown of Larose — he said he was ready for a challenge. The Gazette, like so many other print newspapers, was facing an uncertain future. Readership was down, and Gisclair was tasked with handling the paper’s new website to reach a broader audience. 

“We had all these plans,” Gisclair said. “But the website was up for two weeks before the world closed.” 

Gisclair said he was covering a softball game on March 11 when he heard the news that schools were set to close after reports of a deadly virus overseas became a reality in the U.S.

“I was in a dugout talking and sharing sunflower seeds and making jokes comparing the virus to swine flu,” Gisclair said. “That night, the NBA cancelled their first games. The next day, the world became a much scarier place.”

The next day, Gisclair did as much research as he could while thinking about his parents, who both have health issues that put them at risk if they were to catch coronavirus. One day later, Lafourche Parish had its first positive case, and Gisclair reported on it. 

“The Gazette is just so small, I knew our area wasn’t going to have the coverage if I didn’t get it done,” Gisclair said. 

So he went to work. He created spreadsheets to track all the data he could find nationwide, statewide and parishwide to gain a clear understanding of the big picture the world was wringing their necks to see.

“I’m not a worry wart, but I couldn’t stop researching,” Gisclair said. “And I realized that if I’m worried about this and trying to keep my family safe, a lot of people who read the Gazette are probably doing the same. That’s when I decided I’d take it to the people.” 

Gisclair started posting COVID-19 updates on Facebook at noon each day that feature data on positive cases and hospitalizations in the parish. 

“The residents down the bayou needed this coverage,” Archie Chiasson, Lafourche Parish president, said. “They just ate it up.”

But it wasn’t the positive case updates that made Sue Carrere, an online reader of the Gazette, start checking for Gisclair’s noon update each day. It was the recovery data.

“We used to hear all the negatives when the news started reporting COVID,” Carrere said. “Every time I opened Facebook, all I saw was how many people died. Casey started posting how many people had recovered, and that was such an exciting thing that no one was focusing on. We needed to know that people could survive this.”

Gisclair had to venture out of his sportswriting wheelhouse to provide his community with potentially life-saving information. 

“I’m not a pandemic reporter,” Gisclair said. “I just became one. I have had spreadsheets in my computer for months. I’ve had to buy a hard drive because I maxed out the space on my computer with so much data.” 

Carrere said Gisclair is honest, that he “could never be a politician because he tells the people exactly how it is, even if it isn’t what they want to hear.” 

Gisclair said his biggest struggle reporting on COVID-19 in South Lafourche is the politicization of the pandemic. 

“I’m reporting that people need to wear masks and limit their activities, and they think we’re trying to take their rights away,” Gisclair said. “It’s been extremely difficult to remain impartial when this virus has been politicized like it has.”

Carrere said she trusts Gisclair as a reporter, and that the reality of a bleak situation doesn’t stop Gisclair from trying to uplift the community.

“He always finds the positive in a situation,” Carrere said. “As cheesy as it sounds, his reporting is a bright light in the darkness.” 

Gisclair’s talent for reporting in a crisis is not exclusive to pandemic-related matters. When seven hurricanes threatened his parish in 2020, the parish president utilized him as a resource.

“We really needed him then because we couldn’t keep up with COVID updates and keep the parish afloat – literally,” Chiasson said. 

The South Lafourche community rallied behind Gisclair in his first 365 days at the Gazette. He said that when something is worth reporting in the area, he often gets a call before authorities do.

“There were four or five drownings last year in Grand Isle,” Gisclair said. “For one of them, I called the police department for information, but it hadn’t even been reported to them yet. People know that when something happens, they look to reporters to spread the word.”

Chiasson said Gisclair also increased accessibility to the Gazette’s news feed.

“Casey really flipped the script on what the Gazette does for the community,” Chiasson said. “It was a small, down-the-bayou paper. Now there’s an app, a website and a Facebook page that he’s constantly updating.”

Gisclair said that at a time when headlines spell tragedy for local newspapers through shrinking audiences and closing newsrooms, the Gazette defies the odds. 

The Gazette’s content is entirely free to readers and funded by advertisers. The print edition has gone from eight to 12 pages, circulating in more towns than it ever has. The digital edition readership has skyrocketed from 130,000 views per month to over 1 million views per month in 2020.

“Hiring Casey was the best decision we ever made,” Vicki Chiasson, print editor of the Gazette, said.