“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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