Few Newspapers Ready for Next Blackout

By: Joe Strupp While the recent northeast blackout forced newspapers from Detroit to New York to scramble for energy to put out their daily product, it also caused many papers unaffected by the power outage to reassess their own backup plans.

"I'm dead in the water," said Paul Webb, vice president/production for The Dallas Morning News, when asked how a wide-ranging blackout across Texas would affect him. "I have no backup capabilities at all if there is a blackout over a general area. Virtually no one in our area has backup generators."

Webb's story was repeated across the country by editors who spoke with E&P. Most said they had agreements with neighboring papers to help out if a localized power failure occurred, but in the case of a wide-ranging short circuit over several states -- such as the one that occurred Aug. 14 -- a majority of papers would be left, literally and figuratively, in the dark.

"We would be hard-pressed to print even a small paper," said Ted Lutz, vice president/business manager of The Washington Post. "If we lost power to both of our (printing) plants, we would be struggling."

One advantage for the Post, Lutz explained, was that the paper's printing plants are in separate states -- Maryland and Virginia -- with power feeds coming from different utility companies. The paper's main computer system was moved out of Washington, D.C. to a Virginia site shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, to avoid the crippling effect a terrorist attack could bring. In addition, the Post has a backup generator that could power the main Washington newsroom and pre-press facilities, but not the main plants. "We are exploring how we might manage it in the case of a major problem," Lutz said. "We could not assume that if the Maryland plant lost power that The Sun (of Baltimore), up the road, would be able to help us."

For a number of newspapers, the only absolute protection is the purchase or leasing of backup generators, something that can run into millions of dollars.

"That is on our list (of proposals), but nothing concrete has been done about it," Rich Cox, senior vice president/operations for the San Francisco Chronicle said about buying a generator. "Right now, if there was a blackout on most of the West Coast, we would not be able to print."

Cox said the Chronicle has an emergency generator for its downtown newsroom, which was put in place during the California energy crisis several years ago, but none at any of its three printing plants, two of which are outside the city.

In Dallas, newspaper executives recently hired a consultant to study the paper's backup power needs. Webb said the study, which cost $12,500, concluded that a complete backup system for printing plants and other operations would run about $6 million. Because of the Aug. 14 blackout, "we will be putting that (option) into our 2004 (fiscal) plan," Webb said.

At The Arizona Republic in Phoenix, the northeast power outage sparked interest in bringing in backup generators full time for that paper's two printing plants and main offices, said Bob Kotwasinski, vice president/production. The paper leased diesel-powered generators for use during Y2K when fears of massive power outages caused concern, and "this situation has raised the question of the need for them again," Kotwasinski said. "The question would be: what is the accessibility to those kinds of backup generators in the event of a widespread outage?"

The Star Tribune in Minneapolis, which has no backup power, contemplated more generator support during Y2K, but did not invest given an estimated $4 million price tag, according to Greg Cardinal, engineering manager. "It is a lot of money for something you hope you never use," he said.

For other papers, simply educating themselves about what their power sources are -- and how their area power grids work -- has become a priority. "We need to have a better understanding of what they do," said Frank Paiva, vice president/operations for The Seattle Times, which also prints the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. "We don't have backup power or generators and we don't have a bunch of other newspapers our size we could draw on." At The Miami Herald, which has agreements with two nearby dailies for emergency help, Rich Danze, vice president of operations, said he is looking to expand protection involving other Florida papers. The Aug. 14 blackout "clearly changed the playing field," he said.

Bob Burns, vice president/production at Philadelphia Newspapers, which prints the Inquirer and Daily News, said the blackout also spiked his interest in the heretofore mysterious world of power grids: "Typically, in the past, you assumed you could go somewhere else nearby that has capacity -- but in a widespread blackout, that would not be the case."