Northeast blackout

Sept. 11 prepared media for disasters

Ask news outlets in New York City how they scrambled so effectively to report on the largest power blackout in U.S. history, and some answer with just two numbers.

9/11.

"Unfortunately, the terrorist attacks (of Sept. 11, 2001) did help us plan to deal with stories of this magnitude," said ABC News spokeswoman Cathy Levine. "You begin to think about the unthinkable and you make sure you're prepared for anything that can come your way."

Major TV news operations remained on air Thursday and early Friday, using power from backup generators, even while the outage crippled America's media nerve center.

Though CBS anchor Dan Rather made it back to the news desk Thursday, NBC's Tom Brokaw and ABC's Peter Jennings were out of pocket, vacationing in Montana and Ottawa, respectively. (Levine, reminded of Jennings' delay in getting on camera at the start of hostilities in Iraq, noted the anchor did file reports for TV and radio on power problems in Canada).

Brokaw's heir apparent, Brian Williams, who anchored for hours Thursday without a teleprompter, slept in his Manhattan office overnight to make sure he was available for spot news, said NBC News spokeswoman Barbara Levin.

Nightline host Ted Koppel took over for Jennings from Washington Thursday evening. He got stung by a prankster who claimed to be a New York subway official, urging people to stay inside stalled subway cars and telling viewers to visit a Web site celebrating public phone pranks.

"During live television, unfortunately, despite the screening process, some people get through," Levine said.

Neither ABC nor NBC had plans to recall their top anchors for the story by midday Friday.

Friday morning, Today show anchors presented their show from outside their Rockefeller Center studio. Power had returned there by 5 a.m., but producers didn't want to chance a sudden outage.

Good Morning America anchor Charlie Gibson, in New England on a family vacation, returned in time to co-anchor the show from ABC News' Central Park East headquarters. The show was on air live for five hours so that West Coast viewers got live reports. Rocker Liz Phair, scheduled to perform on GMA live in nearby Bryant Park, did her set "unplugged" with an acoustic guitarist.

The New York Times combined Friday's sports section with its metro section and planned to deliver its Friday Weekend, Escapes and World Business sections to some customers over the weekend, due to the loss of a printing plant in College Point, Queens.

Cable news outlets kept up continuous coverage, with MSNBC's iron man Lester Holt handling afternoon coverage Friday from the same spot where he had co-anchored Today hours earlier. CNN stuck anchors Bill Hemmer and Daryn Kagan outside its Manhattan studio Friday morning, lending a by-the-pants-seat flair.

"It was like watching TV when TV news was in its idealistic adolescence . . . before slickness and production became important," said Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism.

Despite the wide area affected by the outage, coverage seemed New York-centric, with correspondents roaming the streets.

"With reduced staffs, network news is dependent on technology to replace people," Rosenstiel said. "Without (power) they didn't have their machines. And it showed."

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