We are totally dependent on technology in the newsroom.
At no time was that quite so apparent as during the massive windstorm on Dec. 20. When the power went out at the Cowichan Valley Citizen offices in Duncan, I was two pages away from sending the paper to press. All of a sudden, there was absolutely nothing I could do. All of our computers were as useful as doorstops — actually, doorstops are efficient for their purpose, while the hunk of metal and plastic that makes up a desktop computer when the power goes out is not. All hail doorstops.
It was immensely frustrating. We hauled out our smart phones, and one person in the office had a laptop with some battery that we managed to use to cobble together ongoing storm coverage to send out to everyone else whose power had gone out and were desperately looking for some answers on their phones. A phone call to our sister paper’s Nanaimo office, which still had the lights on, eventually got the paper out — on time, mostly — but we were stymied by the fact that the printing press in Ladysmith was non-functional because their power was also down.
It’s amazing how powerless (pun intended) we all are without electricity. We use it pretty much every minute of every day in the modern newsroom. Oh, we have those ubiquitous smart phones, but even they lose function if not plugged in at some point.
It got me thinking about a story I’d read about journalists in Japan and how they functioned following the devastating earthquake and tsunami there in 2011. I have nothing but admiration for how they literally put pen to paper, laboriously copying out a small newspaper by hand so that people would have some place they could find out something about what was happening to them. The paper book, or physical newspaper, really is still the ultimate mobile device.
Driving home from the office on the afternoon of Dec. 20 was tense. Roads were closed, and the trees were still thrashing in the wind, with branches coming down all around my car. My particular detour was a scary winding two-lane, with trees on either side, that was miraculously still passable. The night was a chilly and dark one. My window on the outside world (BC Hydro’s outage map) was my smart phone, whose charger I had forgotten at the office, left on my desk, invisible in the pitch dark room where the reporters live.
What would we do if the outage had lasted longer, the damage more devastating, like it could be in the case of an earthquake? At the Citizen we’ll be sure to have pen and paper handy if that’s what it takes. What are your disaster plans?