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New York Times Web site restored after outage

The paper says a server problem knocked out its Web site and e-mail, which it blames on an "internal issue," despite a report of a cyber attack.

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Joan E. Solsman Former Senior Reporter
Joan E. Solsman was CNET's senior media reporter, covering the intersection of entertainment and technology. She's reported from locations spanning from Disneyland to Serbian refugee camps, and she previously wrote for Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal. She bikes to get almost everywhere and has been doored only once.
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  • Three Folio Eddie award wins: 2018 science & technology writing (Cartoon bunnies are hacking your brain), 2021 analysis (Deepfakes' election threat isn't what you'd think) and 2022 culture article (Apple's CODA Takes You Into an Inner World of Sign)
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Joan E. Solsman
2 min read
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The Web site of The New York Times and its parent company were down for about two hours Wednesday morning, and the company said on Twitter that the problem was with its internal server.

The site appeared to go down shortly before 8:30 a.m. PT and seemed to be restored by about 10:45 a.m. PT, though some connections still failed.

New York Times Co. spokeswoman Danielle Rhoades-Ha said during the outage that the paper's main Twitter account would be the best source for updates. It also was posting key stories during the outage on its Facebook page.

Lacking its main platform for relaying news in real time, the paper's reliance on social media underscores how vital those services have become to news organizations.

Despite that earlier in the day, a tweet from the paper's Lede Blog Twitter account attributed the outage to "technical problems," a Fox Business article reported that the outage stemmed from a "cyber attack." The article cited an unnamed person familiar with the matter. Rhoades-Ha said the company couldn't confirm that and declined to comment further.

Earlier this year, The New York Times reported its computer systems were infiltrated and attacked by Chinese hackers, who stole the corporate password for every Times employee. Other news organizations, like The Wall Street Journal, the Associated Press, and Bloomberg News, have reported similar cyber attacks.

Meanwhile Wednesday, other workers at the newspaper took to Twitter to put the outage in context.

The New York Times Co. also owns, for the time being, the Boston Globe, but that newspaper's Web site remained up and running today.

UPDATED at 10:20 PT with New York Times blaming a server issue, report of cyber attack and company response.

UPDATED at 11:07 PT with service restored.