TPM’s New York City headquarters is located in Chelsea and lost power Monday night like most of the rest of lower Manhattan. The latest word was that we’re still without power there. Fortunately, the servers and equipment that keep the site running are not located in New York City, so the site has stayed up the whole time.
We did not open the New York office Monday, reluctant to have our staff traveling home Monday evening in the teeth of the storm. We had also figured — or at least hoped — that having our staff dispersed and working from home would increase the chances of at least some of us having power and internet. That worked out, probably by luck. In the end, only a couple of the New York edit staff lost internet service Monday evening, and no one lost power — with the exception of Josh, who lives in the vicinity of the office and is stuck in the dark like most of the neighborhood. So we’ve been able to keep on keeping on despite it all.
The flipside of dispersing the staff is that with the subways out, most of our staff would not be able to reach the office now anyway — at least not easily. Most of our team lives in Brooklyn and Queens, so they will probably be working remotely for several more days, or however long it takes to restore subway service.
The timing a week before the election couldn’t be any worse for a political news site, but our team is accustomed to working remotely and virtually, so the disruption has been relatively minimal so far. At least we hope you haven’t noticed. Our DC bureau, where I am, never had any problems and is officially open today. A tip of the hat to the team for staying focused and getting it done.
We’re hoping that as soon as the power is restored, it will be a simple matter of turning on the lights and rebooting the equipment. Whether our staff will be able to make it into Manhattan by then is the big unknown.
Thanks for sticking with us. We hope you and yours are safe, too.
