I had really hoped Bill, or someone who knew Bill and this talk could give more input on it. I found a vague summary of the whole talk: http://www.tcsa.org/lisa2001/cnn.txt
The internet sucked as a means of getting information on 9/11. I spent about 20 minutes hitting every news site I could think of, and they had all tanked. I set an away msg on IM: "Internet news sucks, I'm going to watch CNN."
3. This type of situation doesn't lend itself well to typing in the news
To answer the comment I've got off list, I was looking for images at the least of what was going on. These were not small (middle-of-nowhere) cities. Text on IRC or Usenet were not giving me the visual I was looking for, and pages like slashdot were vague to begin with.
William said they changed a lot of the way they do things at the company that hosts CNN.com since 9/11. I don't believe they were the only ones.
Can you name a few examples of the things they changed?
From the link above:
Aftermath - volatility worse than ever before - automate swing process ([it was] on todo list for a year) - faster page reduction - network redesign - increased WAN bandwidth (if the servers could have handled the load, the WAN link would have been saturated) - Standing phone bridge reservation - review crisis procedures Gerald