EMAIL NOTICE: Sent about 9:30 a.m. today after the early morning delivery of the paper was disrupted by problems with a digital app for iPads.

You know how a snowstorm could disrupt delivery of the morning newspaper?

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No more worries about that now that the state’s largest newspaper, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, has gone virtually all digital every day but Sunday. Right?

Well, no.

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The digital world has its ups and downs, a fact of which the Arkansas Times has been aware since we began subscriptions for the Arkansas Blog. Things happen. It’s also somewhat confusing for some users. Yes, our system has had bugs. One memorable attack shut us down for two days.

Something happened today on the D-G’s app for the iPad it has been giving to subscribers to stay wired. It didn’t work. Calling for help is difficult. The phones are slammed. I had figured out you could go online to the arkansasonline.com website and click the Today’s Paper feature and get a version similar in most respects to the version on the iPad, though it’s not quite as smoothly functional.

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I suspect the advice to go online will not be a snap for some of the people who had no computers or even WiFi before they bought into iPad newspaper delivery. Some oldtimers (I R 1) have adapted to multiple electronic platforms; others not so much.

I feel the newspixel’s pain. I thought I’d do them a favor and reprint their notice, having received several queries  this morning asking if the D-G had published today.

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If not for sheltering in place, you could run out to a convenience store and buy one of the small number of paper copies still being printed.

UPDATE: A followup e-mail arrived about 10 a.m. I have nothing but sympathy. The publishing business was already shaky before the virus, advertising has plunged to negligible and the publisher of the D-G has made a nearly unprecedented investment  by switching to digital and depending on those subscribers for revenue. A bad day in this context is a truly bad day.

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