The perils of centralization

My paper's Web site is down tonight. I don't know if it's scheduled maintenance or not. I assume if this is scheduled maintenance that I didn't get the memo. As the Web editor, I should get those memos.

I think it likely that it's not scheduled maintenance, and here's why. The main Web site for the company that developed and built and maintains our Web site is down. Now, if it was scheduled maintenance, why would they take their own homepage down? Why take their support site down?

Maybe I don't understand the details of how to maintain servers. Maybe.

Here's the thing, though. The same company has managed to sell Web sites to almost every other major newspaper in Montana. That means that, by my count, these papers are down tonight:

• The Billings Gazette (largest in the state)
• The Missoulian
• The Montana Standard (Butte)
• The Helena Independent Record
• The Bozeman Daily Chronicle (my paper)

(And that's just in Montana. This company operates across the country.)

It seems that the Great Falls Tribune and Flathead Beacon remain unaffiliated with our Web company, as their sites remain online tonight.

Let me just pose a hypothetical here. What if something major happened in one of those cities (or across the entire state) during this downtime? A significant portion of Montana would be without online news — from the newspapers, at least.

It would be a field day for the television stations, whose Web sites are not hosted by the same company. No, sir. They are online and functional tonight.

I understand the benefits of going with a big company for your Web site needs. It saves money, ultimately, because you're paying for expertise in bulk. These sites are like the Sam's Clubs and Costcos of tech. Budget constraints force papers to shop there because they can't afford to buy the best — hand-crafted, artisan stuff.

But it's a night like tonight, sitting in the middle of a black hole of news, that I wonder whether it might be a good idea to widen our gaze next time we redesign the site. Maybe we shouldn't just choose from whoever happens to have a booth at the trade show. Maybe we should see if there's something we can do for ourselves and keep things in-house.

Just a thought.

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