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Posted by: Lee Shake (leeshake@novagate.com) on 6/13/1998@02:54hrs:
Please, anyone reading this posting who lives on Staten Island: If you agree with the rest of us that the Staten Island Advance should go on line with a WEB SITE, call the ADVANCE and direct them to this site and this posting or contact an ADVANCE STAFFER that you know is on-line at home, and do the same. ALSO direct them to my previous posting of a few days ago and the responses that were generated thereof.
Quick update: I grew up in Grand Haven on S.I. I now live in Grand Haven, MI. We recently suffered the worst two wind storms ever recorded in this area. Dozens of businesses were wiped out, hundreds of homes were damaged or destroyed and thousands and thousands of trees were smashed and/or uprooted. The damage is estimated in the millions of dollars. Power was out for over half a million people and some of them who lost power on Thursday, May 28th didn't get power restored for a week. All of our local radio stations went off the air. The local Cable T.V. facilities were chopped off by lack of power as was our local daily newspaper, The Grand Haven Tribune. Remarkably, most of the phone service stayed up and the local I.S.P.s (Internet Service Providers) were back up and running within a day or two with emergency generators. The Grand Haven Tribune recently went on-line with their own WEB page which is located at: http://www.grandhavenlive.com/. While the Grand Haven Tribune had to use the presses and computers of another newspaper in the city of Holland, Michigan for two days, the TRIBUNE's Web Page was alive and up to date with news and pictures, even before the newspaper hit the streets. While this didn't help us local folks much because we couldn't fire up our computers for lack of power, it was a great help to folks who lived outside of our blacked-out area. What follows is an article, written by Tribune writer, Jason Carr, as published by the Grand Haven Tribune in a special "Wind Storm 98" section of the TRIBUNE published on Friday, June 12, 1998:
Headline -- "Out-of-towners kept up with storm on Tribune's web site".
E-mails by the dozen filled the inbox of Thom Ryan, Internet systems manager for the GRAND HAVEN TRIBUNE, following the windstorm that left the Tri-Cities a disaster area.
ryan continued updates of the TRIBUNE's website throughout the clean-up and included pictures that struck a nerve with many former residents of the area.
By the Monday following the storm, he had received 56 e-mail messages, with the pace lessening to about a dozen per day the rest of the week. He said messages came from Colorado, Texas, Arkansas, California and one from Paris, France, this last Tuesday.
"Most of the out-of-state ones were former residents or familes of residents," Ryan said, such as the man stationed at the Army's Fort Hood in Texas, who wanted to check and see how his relatives in the Tri-Cities were faring. "Most of them were messages just thanking us for the coverage."
One such former resident is Melissa Dalman, who moved from Spring Lake to Indianapolis last year. "A friend of mine who lives in Grand Haven e-mailed me the link and thought I might be interested because there were photos," she said.
Dalman said she has been checking the site about once per day since the storm and throughout its clean-up.
"I was so grateful there was coverage. My family is still there and they can tell me what's going on, but it's better to actually be able to see it," she said. "It's nice to have that link to home."
Dalman said both photos and stories were impressive, especially because the crushed van of her friend's mother was mentioned in a story. "It was just really nice to find out everyone was OK," she said.
Ryan said the photos were the most popular part of the site as they were updated as they became available, "and I'm sure that's what people were coming for, but we were working really closely with the news department to get updated stories."
Thirteen [WEB] pages containing three photos each made it up onto the site.
Internet sales manager Stuart Jerome said he and Ryan were putting completed stories up just moment after TRIBUNE reporters finished them, "so we were able to be right on top of things."
Much as the paper version of the TRIBUNE had to be printed at the HOLLAND SENTINAL because of power outages, ryan updated the site from home, "but we still got the website done every day and in that regard we're trying to follow in the tradition of the newspaper by never missing a day." ENDIT.
Enough is enough, Staten Island Advance. There are NO good reasons why you are not on-line. If you need help, it has been volunteered by good folks posting on this page. If you are offended by the idea of a little old lady in Florida creating a web-page for you, you might try Tottenville High School. They have an excellent web page designed and maintained by their students. The other high schools on the island probably also have similar sites. The site doesn't have to be created in the offices of your newspaper using your own computers, although it should be kept up-to-date by your own staff, either using your computers or one of their computers at home. I'm sure you are using computers newer than an old 8088 IBM (DOS only)clone, from ten or twelve years ago. Any computer using Windows 3.x or higher or virtually any Mac computer will do the trick. NO EXCUSE!