‘Chain reaction’ after power outage takes down Fairfax websites and hits print production
Fairfax’s websites and newspapers have been disrupted after its Sydney headquarters were hit by a power problem on Sunday night.
How the AFR home page looks today
Websites for the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and the Australian Financial Review were down or interrupted for several hours.
At the time of posting, afr.com.au’s home page was empty. (10.40am update: The site is now back up)
The newspapers did make it out on sale, although it is unclear how many editions were lost.
In a note in today’s SMH, the paper apologised to readers unable to get a copy, saying it had been hit by “a power outage”. It said: “The outage triggered a chain reaction of events at one of the data centres the serve Herald computer systems, holding up production for more than four hours.”
Update: A spokesman for Fairfax told Mumbrella that although the publisher had a back up generator, the problems were triggered by the unexpected outage at the company’s data centre nearby.
He said that most readers were able to get their newspapers. He said: “There were some delays in rural and regional areas.”
Meanwhile, Chiang Lim, CEO of the Newsagents Association of NSW and ACT, told Mumbrella that he had not heard from his members of specific delays caused by the power outage. He said: “It happens so often, it’s just a case of ‘Here we go again’.”
11.20am update: Fairfax issued the following statement:
“Fairfax Media’s production systems for its newspapers and websites are back online following a major power outage that affected 4800 homes and businesses in the Sydney suburb of Pyrmont late yesterday afternoon.
“The outage caused significant disruption to the main data centre serving computer systems for titles including The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Australian Financial Review, The Newcastle Herald and The Illawarra Mercury. Online publishing and print production for these titles was affected but has been restored.
“The production difficulties caused delays for some newspaper deliveries, especially in rural and regional areas.
“Fairfax apologises to anyone who has experienced difficulty accessing our websites or who missed out on a copy of a newspaper today.”
The digital editions of the SMH and The Age have been made free today.
Tim Burrowes founded Mumbrella in 2008. He worked on Mumbrella until 2021. At various points he was editor, content director and editor-at-large.
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Unbelievably poor service from AFR Digital. Not even a message to its subscribers.
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Huh?! Fairfax’s statement ignores the fact that they have back-up generators and that they seem to have failed.
Please ask the question.
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I live in Pyrmont and there was no power outage for us yesterday…
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And I think this raises the question about the role Tony Abbott has playing.
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“Down down, Fairfax is down”. (Apologies for not posting this cheap and derivative gag in a more timely fashion.)
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Beautifully timed to coincide with last night’s Australian Story.
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