(2003-08-14) — A widespread electrical power outage affected some 20 million North Americans tonight, but none were so hard hit as writers of so-called weblogs, a kind of online journal.
With no electricity, many “bloggers” were forced to post their latest musings to the Internet by candlelight. Some resorted to using old-fashioned kerosene-fueled personal computers. Others wrote their thoughts out longhand on paper then ran through the streets reading them aloud to the passing crowds of stranded commuters.
Andrew Sullivan immediately posted an essay claiming that bloggers had brought down the power grid “just like we brought down Trent Lott and Howell Raines.”
But there were some bright spots in the midst of the darkness. Dozens of blogs set up PayPal donation links to a fund for purchasing backup power systems for bloggers in the outage area.
And while traffic snarls frustrated urban commuters, traffic at InstaPundit.com spiked to more than 7,500 visitors in the hour following the start of the blackout.
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Bloggers Among Hardest Hit by Massive Blackout
by Scott Ott for ScrappleFace · 7 Comments · ·
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Tags: U.S. News
7 responses so far ↓
1 The Agitator // Aug 14, 2003 at 11:34 pm
Blogging by Candlelight
Not really. Power’s back! Scrappleface has the right idea….
2 www [dot] margilowry [dot] com // Aug 14, 2003 at 11:49 pm
Hilarity Ensues
With no electricity, many “bloggers” were forced to post their…
3 Heretical Ideas // Aug 15, 2003 at 1:12 am
NORTHEAST BLACKOUT
Wow… so apparently while I was out winning at poker, large portions of the Northeast and Canada had a blackout. How bizarre. You can follow thie whole thing on Instapundit, natch, although this story really hits home the tragedy….
4 A Small Victory // Aug 15, 2003 at 9:38 am
it’s Bush’s fault!
“The disturbance appears to have been caused by the loss of several major transmission lines in the upper Midwestern United States, but investigations and data collections continue,” the North American Electric Reliability Council, a not-for-profit pri…
5 A Special Kind of Stupid // Aug 15, 2003 at 10:30 am
Blackout
“Bloggers among hardest hit . . .” hehehe….
6 cheesedip.com // Aug 19, 2003 at 8:43 pm
last blackout post, i swear
From “Bloggers Among Hardest Hit by Massive Blackout”: A widespread electrical power outage affected some 20 million North Americans tonight,…
7 Note-It Posts // Oct 19, 2003 at 1:46 pm
Power outage has unforseen consequences
The power outage that hit the east coast today has, of course, caused all kinds of interrupts, including to blogging. This is a VeryBadThing, but from a selfish point of view, it has let me catch up on some of…