Poynter Online asked people at TV stations across the country how they are handling coverage of Blackout 2003. We have heard from folks in the middle of the affected area and from people outside the affected area whose viewers and readers are nevertheless feeling the impact.

Here is what they wrote:

Maura McHugh, executive producer, WCBS-TV (New York, N.Y.)

Things started out very, very shaky when the blackout hit. It took us a good 45 minutes just to get some lights and a camera working in the newsroom so we could go on the air (the actual studio was not usable the first 2 days). But once we got over the initial hump and on the air things really fell into place and ran quite smoothly.

No one really saw our first 16 hours of coverage mind you, but at least we could repeat all our video and information for the rest of the day since it was fresh to viewers! 
 
Similar to responses you heard from other newsrooms, we do have a plan in place for big breaking stories. Specific jobs have been designated that have to be filled when something breaks.

• First, there is a crisis point person in charge of assigning people to the various positions.
• Two producers are put in the control room, one to deal with on-air, the other with lining up tapes and where to go to next
• A writer is assigned to every reporter
• A number of bodies are assigned to phoners (officials calling in to discuss the situation on air).
• Someone is assigned to the crawl so it's continually updated.
• Someone is assigned as anchor producer to filter new information to anchors constantly
• Someone numbers all tapes. As soon as a piece of video is cut for air it gets the #1, then so on. That person also keeps updating the list in the computer and makes sure all tapes requested for air are loaded in.
• Someone logs all press conferences
• Newsroom staff knows to come in to work without calling
• We also make sure we get the entire newsroom to stand still for a few minutes every few hours for a quick rundown on everything we're covering

Another little tip: make sure you have plenty of flashlights on hand in your newsroom. We had to convince a Home Depot to open and let us in that night so we could buy flashlights and lanterns. Our editors, microwave, and playback technicians would have had no light otherwise to edit tape and keep us on the air.

Hoping for a quiet end to the summer before our extended coverage of the anniversary of 9-11.  

The power first went out in the station. But we never lost our Internet connection. Allison Williams was the editor working at the time. When she started hearing about outages all across the area from the assignment desk, she tied in the story with the information from New York.

We actually had it on the site before it hit the air. The station was without power for almost 45 minutes while they got the generator going, and they were reporting live out the station's front door.

According to e-mail from one viewer -- we were the first site to have the big connection with the cities losing power.

We were the only website in Cleveland to have the power outage information. In fact, Cleveland.com was offline.

Allison continued to work with the newsroom and assignment desk to keep the information updated, although we didn't know how many people were actually coming to us. We scaled back out homepage to include only the top story, headlines, and weather.

We decided to be agressive with the way it looked on the website, with several top stories, video, etc. covering the most important aspects.

Power updates and the fact that communities were going to lose water were the biggest angles.

Everyone in the building helped out: sales, managers, biz office.. answering phones .. getting flashlights, water.

I worked all night to help with the different aspects of the story. We had miners trapped, gas lines at the only open station, and riders that had gotten stranded on an amusement park ride. We got video from all across the area.

It was dark, hot, and there were a lot of sweaty people in the newsroom. The only lights were our computer screens. (had to take flashlights to go to the bathroom ;)) But we kept typing away. Our main anchor even offered NewsNet5 computers to the Cleveland Plain Dealer people. He was interviewing them live on the air since they were having trouble printing the paper with no power.

Since people in the area didn't have power, we were guessing that they could power up laptops or palm pilots or were getting relatives in other cities to come to get the latest from NewsNet5.com. We wanted to stay on top of it minute-by-minute.

The mayor had updates until about 2 a.m. I stayed all night updating information, warning downtown workers not to come to work until after noon. Because I was here listening to the mayor's press conferences, we (the web site) ended up providing the newest information to the anchors on the 5 a.m. news.

As power started to come back on, we added updates from the mayor, more video, slideshows, and the long lists of who had power and water and who didn't ... Plus what was open and what was closed on Friday.

The assignment desk was getting swamped with closings calls and we shared e-mails to get as much information out as possible. We tried to write stories relevant to viewers' questions (about) spoiled food, boiling water.

Darlene Dunn took over our coverage during the day Friday as rolling blackouts started and people tried to get fresh water.

The big story was that it looked like the massive outage started in Ohio. Darlene picked up the story and made sure we had the information reported in an ABC exclusive.

The rest is history. It was a great team effort, especially between the nn5 staff and the
newsroom.

The PGA Championship was being played in Rochester when the blackout hit. It was a our big story and I was co-anchoring in the field. The golf course initially had power, so the plan was to have us broadcast from the field via satellite, but we could not because our tower was effected.

The next plan (was) to send an anchor directly to our local cable company, and plug our live truck directly into the cable system, but en route the engineers found a way around that. We got on the air an hour and a half after the outage hit. We were first on the air and stayed on for three hours in special report mode. I shared reports from the PGA with our sports anchor, covering how the tournament was effected. 

Our anchors and reporters were also on our local all-news radio station (yes, we're all part of the Clear Channel family!) sharing information and doing talk backs.

I'll make this short, but I will say that I am very proud of how our staff reacted during the Blackout. Our newsroom divided into three groups, one gathering information and feeding it to the newsroom (desk, anchors, etc). The second dealt with our immediate on-air product: phoners, getting tapes on-air, booking satellite time, coordinating what anchor was going to handle what topic, where etc. The third dealt with logistics and editorial content. In other words, "what's happening and where do we need to be to cover this?" Disaster coverage takes pretty much the same path, regardless of the details. What changes is the scope and the names of your Rabbis.

Technically, we took the hit and went to generator power. The one key piece of equipment that went belly-up was our digital router (the piece of equipment that allows live shots to make it on air -- pretty significant in the world of TV), that was not linked to the UPS. Engineers worked frantically to fix this, while we worked on a work-around to get our crews on the air live. 

What I am most proud of is the staff who simply showed up at the station, ready to work. We had photographers who were on vacation suddenly "appear," gear in hand, asking where we needed them to go. Our most junior producer, who had put together the noon show and was at the gym when this went down, came back into work (without hitting the showers) and helped honcho the overnight. Everyone worked incredible hours, then came back for an added long day on Friday. I think the "being all over breaking news" mentality is something that has definitely taken root in our newsroom. That, plus finding the only pizza place w/power in the region, made for
great coverage.

Of course, at one point, I was wondering who, exactly, was watching, seeing as no one had power. We considered simulcasting on radio, but didn't get much initial interest from stations and didn't pursue it too vigorously.

One added note, we even had members of other departments volunteer to help, as well as our business office come down with hundreds of dollars in hand for expenses.

We had planned to lead the afternoon newscasts with team coverage of the Tropical Wave, which passed across Florida Thursday, dumping more rain onto already-flooded ground.

We spent those intense, frantic minutes leading up to our 5 p.m. newscast trying to rule out terrorism, both in the Northeast and here in Central Florida. We have several high-profile targets (Disney, Universal, SeaWorld), and our local Homeland Security division, made up of local law enforcement, has done its best to maintain a high profile. We lined up the number two man for a quick phoner.

Air travel is also a big deal here, with roughly 3 million passengers using Orlando International every year. We happened to have a crew in place to cover the visit of the Secretary of the Department of Transportation, where he was handing over a multi-million dollar check to beef up security. Shifting gears was no problem... and as the afternoon wore on, this became the biggest local impact story.

We used our chopper to fly over the main power plant for Central Florida, and used it for a backdrop for live phoners with the three power companies that serve the region. We learned that we were indeed on the same grid, but that fail-safes worked. The major power supplier later walked us into their nerve center, and showed us how the system worked. That supervisor also happened to grow up in New York City, lived through the two previous major Northeast blackouts, and offered perspectives on what his colleagues up north were going through. Sometimes you just get lucky.

We ended up taking most of the NBC Special Reports during the 5-6:30 afternoon news block, but as the 90 minutes wore on we would cut back to local more quickly.

When the lights flickered, and the computer terminals buzzed, my old instinct kicked in, "print 'em if you've got 'em." Power surges, blackouts, and howling generators are nothing particularly new at TV stations.

But we were lucky. The power stabilized in a few seconds, and it was back to business as usual, or so we thought. Gradually, we came to realize that this wasn't just a power surge. It wasn't just a local outage. It wasn't just a regional outage. It was a major story.

We did a few cut-ins before the start of our five o'clock newscast, and I remember starting the first one with the words, "If you're able to watch this special report on your television right now, you're one of the lucky ones." From there, we began to deploy crews, and devise our coverage plan for the New Jersey side of what I started calling "The Big Blackout" on the air.

The most important thing we had to remember was not to get sucked into New York's story. Just like 9-11, our mission was to service our viewers here in New Jersey. That meant focusing on the commute, and the difficulties with communications. It was an eerie reminder of 9-11, telling our viewers not to expect their loved ones home any time soon, and not to expect to hear from them either.

The phone was again our ally. As our live trucks and crews were being deployed, we talked to a representative from New Jersey Transit, a woman in the blackout area who was stuck in the dark without air conditioning, and one of our producers who was at Liberty airport.

We also relied heavily on aerial shots from: fixed tower cams at the approaches to the bridges and tunnels, Chopper 12, and helicopter shots from a couple of the New York stations that allowed us to carry their signal. As was the case during 9-11, the availability of good aerial pictures was key to bringing the story home. We were able to show the trains stopped, the crush of foot traffic building, the cars in gridlock, and the good old ferry boats still running to save the day.

All in all, The Big Blackout was another reminder of the vital role we play in letting people know what's going on, keeping them calm, providing official information, correcting rumors and false information, and helping them make decisions about how to proceed in time of crisis.

Jacksonville had a huge citywide outage in April 2002. We came back the next day with this story, which addressed many of the issues. May be worth sharing. My favorite was the people who couldn't get into their houses because they don't carry keys and their automatic garage door opener wouldn't work without power.

Here in Edmonton we are being bounced off the local airwaves by our national newsroom in Vancouver... but we'll be back on by six local time. At the moment, we have crews at the Edmonton International where flights are being delayed and rerouted causing transportation chaos. We're also talking to Alberta power officials to see what impact the blackout is having on western Canada -- and we are hoping to go live to our Toronto newsroom at 6 p.m. if their backup generator holds! We also have a major local story under way -- a three-alarm condo fire that razed the building forcing a mass evacuation, so our resources are somewhat tapped. Given the confusion over the actual cause of the blackout, we're poised to switch gears at any second. We had a big fire show planned with several reports and bumpers and live hits, now we are flipping over to the blackout and its local impact as our lead. So, the scramble is on!

Kelly Rostic, anchor at KDEB-KOLR (Springfield, Mo.)

We quickly called our local power company to see if something like that could happen here. Turns out, most of our power is generated locally. We also checked to see about the effect at the airport (not much considering we're a regional airport). So even though the likelihood is of a major outtage not happening here, we still felt it was important to put a reporter live at the power plant to answer those questions. Although I did have someone say "Well, that wouldn't happen here, so it's not that important." But our viewers don't know that and they may be sitting at home wondering if it could! I think sometimes reporters/producers/anchors can sometimes misjudge stories because we know "it couldn't happen here" or the "it's not very likely to happen" but the viewers don't know that and they rely on us to tell them the important information.

While we weren't directly affected by the power outage at WHNT in Huntsville, Ala., we did carry CBS's wall-to-wall coverage when we would have normally had local news at 4:30 and 5 o'clock. However, we did cut in to let our viewers know that several US Air flights leaving for New York City and coming to Huntsville from the "Big Apple" had been cancelled. I also did radio updates for a couple of stations and mentioned the airport changes to listeners.

Here at KSDK in St Louis, one of our anchors just happened to be in N.Y. and with great effort made a phone report. Did you realize cell phone service was affected? He reported lines 20 deep for pay-phones. Also, we sent a reporter to Lambert Airport to report on the trickle-down effect on flights.

Norman Robinson, anchor at WDSU-TV (New Orleans, La.)

Our first reaction was to check backup plans for emergency reponse crews, hazardous material clean-up teams, etc. Where is the emergency command center located? Who are the officials running the show? And what kind of equipment is involved?

My first question was: Are we, too, on a major grid that could go down? Turns out Chicago (2 1/2 hours way) could impact our power. So what kind of emergency plan or system do we have in place? What is the power company doing to keep us online -- or get us back if our system goes? How are hospitals and other critical services prepped --generators etc...