Oh, the woes of a crash!
TechCrunch highlighted Business 2.0’s recent situation. The magazine apparently “inadvertently deleted” the completed June issue from its server, and the backup wasn’t working. Before publication. Although the press deadline will, it seems, be met (or already has been?), this is an embarrassment. A wake-up call, too.
A similar scenario transpired at a newspaper I worked at: On one of our first issues, we had it done, and then it disappeared. Who knows what happened. We reconstructed the whole thing, in a very sleep-deprived state. It was nearly finished, and the computers crashed. It was gone again. We still managed to make it to press, not too much the worse for wear — at least after a couple days of sleep.
The problem with the similarity between these two situations, though, is that my example was on a college newspaper. A professional publication is necessarily held to a higher standard, and each piece needed to produce a professional publication must be professional. It sounds like the IT department messed up. Why wasn’t the backup usable? How do you accidently delete the current issue?
Backup is vital. Later, working at other publications, it was always treated with a high level of respect. It may seem mundane at the time, but automations can help. And it’s worth it. It’s important.
We at MDAT have recently talked about getting offsite backup ability at a place like Mozy for our stuff. We’ve probably lingered too long on not getting something this . . .
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