But when it works, it's beautiful

Reporter G has been chronicling a network malfunction that has every LANG paper in Southern California scrambling.

In the words of the Press-Telegram's Kristopher Hanson,

Unysis - or as we fondly refer to it, unisux - is down at the PT and Breeze as well.

The system crashed yesterday around 5 or 6 p.m. and isn't expected to be up until "later this afternoon" at the earliest. In the meantime, we're being told to file stories via email.

We've gotten reports of designers traveling across L.A. County and working late into the night to finish pages at each property individually. Of course, if they hadn't centralized the desks and slashed staff in the first place, LANG would have been much better equipped to handle problems like this when they occur (and network errors like this aren't unusual). But for the sake of saving a few bucks, LANG's remaining employees will have to shoulder that burden for them. The communities "served" by this consolidation plan have yet another reason to be skeptical about MediaNews' claims that slashing staff will somehow allow them to serve California better.