“Newspaper editors for a century have called each day’s paper ‘The Daily Miracle,’ in tribute to all the things that have to happen before it ends up on your doorstep. But nine days ago, high-tech disaster struck the newspaper. For a moment, it looked like there was a real possibility that The Blade would not be able to publish a paper for – what other day could be more appropriate – Friday, Jan. 13. Yet they did,” Jack Lessenberry reports for The Toledo Blade.
“‘It truly was a miracle that we published The Blade that morning, and we did it all working together,’ said Kurt Franck, Blade managing editor. What happened was that the newspaper was ambushed by a high-tech varmint. Despite firewalls and other protective systems, a deadly computer virus broke through and hit the newspaper’s network shortly before 10 a.m. on Jan. 12. Within a short period of time, almost nothing was working. The Blade was cut off from the Internet, from e-mail, and from much of its own material,” Lessenberry reports. “The Blade’s first edition was published on Dec. 19, 1835. One hundred and seventy years later, a high-tech criminal tried to do something that civil wars and epidemics have failed to do – prevent The Blade from putting out a paper.”
“Staffers from different departments worked together side by side. People kept their tempers and worked far into the night. Most of The Blade’s computers wouldn’t talk to each other, but the newspaper’s MacIntoshes were immune to the virus,” Lessenberry reports. “In the end, the Macs and the flash drives saved the day. The paper got off the presses three hours late, but it was printed – and delivered.”
“Though computer experts were called in to start working on fixing the sabotage, problems persisted for several days, and the expensive and tedious task of cleaning and disinfecting each individual computer terminal is still under way,” Lessenberry reports. “The virus took a heavy financial toll on The Blade, Mr. Zerbey said; the paper lost many thousands of dollars in advertising alone that it was unable to publish. But it will lead to better security systems. “We’re setting up a disaster recovery room that will be manned at all times with computers that are immune to viruses,” Mr. Zerbey said. The Blade’s internal network will also be cleaned and strengthened.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews reader “Brian T.” for the link.]
MacDailyNews Take: It’s good to have a stronger network and disaster recovery procedures in place, but wouldn’t it make a heck of a lot more sense to get some more Macs? Based on what happened, that solution seems more logical to us.
P.S. Now there’s a viable Macintosh ad (based on an actual story) for you right there, Apple.
P.P.S. As for this part:
On Friday the 13th, The Blade was flooded with angry calls from readers who noticed the imperfections in their paper, or complained because it was delivered late. “I stopped counting after 66 calls that morning,” said Mr. Corsoe, the sports editor. “But it was funny – as soon as I explained about the computer virus, they understood. Almost all of them instantly became sympathetic.” – See the article Defending Windows over Mac a sign of mental illness from our own SteveJack. It’s all about “Stockholm Syndrome” and why Windows users have such difficulty seeing the glaring truth.
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“No need to buy more Macs. Just throw money at the problem. And the next Service Pack will take care of everything. Trust me.”
– Typhoid Bill
Random Thought of the Day:
Barry White was partly responsible for at least half of the current U.S. population.
You would think that they would get the message and just pay for some Macs and never have that happen again. But no, they’re going to make a room that will still get infected like the others because they still insist on using an unsafe OS like Windows. Good thing they at least had a few Macs to save the day.
If you put a Windows PC without plugs or cables inside a 3 foot thick lead container filled with concrete and launched it into space heading away from our solar system, some way some how a virus would still find a way to infect it. And Symantec has a contingency plan for just such an occurrence.
There’s probably a reason they can’t switch to more Macs. It probably has to do with the software. I’m sure they are using specific software that only runs on Windows. Its the 3rd party vendors that dictate what computers we use. If more software were written that was web based, it would make it much easier to replace Windows based machines.
Jeff,
The vast majority (80+%) of newspapers are Mac-based. I don’t have the exact stats, but you could probably Google it.
Their IT guys don’t want them to get more Macs. They’d be out of jobs. Does anyone have an email address of the editor at the paper? We should email them the virtues of Mac OS X Server and Client Macs. Get rid of Windows now!
I have a disaster recovery room too. It’s pretty nice. It has a tub, a sink, a toilet, a vent fan and lots of reading material.
Hey, that’s my home town! You know, if they were running all Macs, Friday the 13th would have come an gone just like any other day.
On a sort of side note, I saw an article this morning about how Bill G. is donating $900 million to find a cure for TB. Hopefully he’ll have better luck with that than he has had eradicating viruses on his OS.
P.S. MDN, Toledo is spelled wrong in your headline.
Doesn’t Toledo have gigantic frog statues everywhere?
—REPLY FROM THE TOLEDO BLADE—
I wrote the Blade asking them what they were putting in their disaster recovery room and received a reply.
“Thank you! Yes, of course they are Macs. I didn’t say as much lest some moron be inspired to create a Mac virus…”
“Doesn’t Toledo have gigantic frog statues everywhere?”
Well, not everywhere. There is one downtown and Toledo is also known as Frog Town.
There’s a joke somewhere about a newspaper almost “croaking” but I can’t think right now.
Thanks ndelc, I was wondering why I couldn’t pronounce “Toldeo” in my head when reading that headline.
Another newspaper story, although old, but it seems like it hasn’t changed much. Back in the 90’s the two newspapers I illustrated for in Finland, went all digital. One of them with more than 200 employees and issued in 50000 ex daily, chose Mac, the other with a little less than 200 and around 30 000 ex, chose PC. The Macpaper has until this very day managed with just 2 persons who take care of the whole system, servers and the individual machines and it works, day after day, year after year. They might have a problem with the mail server a couple of times during the year but nothing more serious.
I remember that they brought in a PC back then, to the archives. After a couple of days, it just stood there and wouldn’t work. A couple of bespectacled greysuits came and scratched their heads over it and after a few more days it disappeared and never came back.
The other paper, then? At least once a week it stood still and the journalists swore and tore their hair while they were waiting for some expertise from the outside.
It improved over time, of course. This was in the time of Windows95, but still.
Is it any wonder I chose Mac when I bought my first computer in 1998 – and I have never looked back!
Buttoning up the network isn’t a bad idea. Stop the viruses, malware, DoS attacks before they penetrate the perrimeter.
And, not all of the papers vendors, etc., have a choice in the matter of what OS to use.
Still, it is a heartening story about the Mac saving the day.
Windows, a bigger threat than Robert E. Lee. There’s a tag line for you.
Bring it up to date:
Windows. A bigger threat to national secuity than Al Queda.
BTW, I’m another veteran of the newpaper IT business. Most of my papers were Mac shops. Those that weren’t had problems like this.
Let’s just make it point-blank:
Windows. Our biggest national security threat.
A few good viruses could stop 90% of our computers; few other attacks carry that kind of potential. Sleep easy after thinking about that one…
Mac-immunity has its advantages!