When the New York Times website and mobile app went offline last Wednesday, the publishers turned to its Facebook page to reach out to its readers. The three articles, which were also accompanied by timely Tweets from staff of the iconic paper, showed how the paper has acquiesced to the march of technology in the publishing industry.
The message read: "As you may be aware, The Times is experiencing a server issue that has resulted in our website being temporarily unavailable. We expext the site to be restored soon. In the meantime, we are publishing key news articles in their entirety here on Facebook."
Analyst Dan Gillmor recommends that news organizations such as the Times must have their very own backup blogs. These blogs are key, as the information from the news services need to be on platforms they own to avoid issues as to the use of another entities platform for a purpose not originally intended.
The losses sustained from the said website outage is still to be determined.
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