Monday, May 28, 2018

City of Lake Worth: Welcome McKenna Ross to the team at The Palm Beach Post!


UPDATE: There is no update. It’s an old, tired story and nobody really cares any more. But do you remember who originally broke the news about that “Zombie Alert”? Please continue reading to find out!

Who is McKenna Ross?

It was Ross who first broke the story in the online edition, “Lake Worth falsely sends out ‘zombie’ alert during power outage” last Tuesday, May 22nd. See excerpts from that breaking news below. To follow Ross on Twitter click on this link.

That’s right. It was this story by Ross which then proceeded to spread around the world, well, sort of like “The Walking Dead”.

But then the very next day something very curious happened. Remember, Ross broke the original story on Tuesday, May 22nd. Then in the next day’s print edition was a front page story below the fold, “By Kevin D. Thompson”. The story continued on page A11. At the very end of the article was this:

“Palm Beach Post Staff Writer McKenna Ross contributed to this report.”

Contributed? She broke the story! Why wasn’t Ross on the front page byline?

But anyhow, before we get to the news last week from Ross about that erroneous push alert sent out by the City, let’s briefly take a step back.

This whole “ZOMBIE” thing started in the early morning hours on Sunday, May 20th. Then Yours Truly sent out several Tweets about this situation to inform the community later in the afternoon. The Tweet below as of today is up to 944 ReTweets and 386 “Likes”. Who knew zombies were so popular!


Please pause for Tweet to load:



“Was the system hacked or just a dumb joke?”

Without further ado. . .


Two excerpts from the original news from McKenna Ross, the news that by Wednesday, May 23rd, had spread all around this Planet Earth:


LAKE WORTH — A city power outage alert in Lake Worth on Sunday caused concern in residents for its mention of zombies.
     That’s correct. Zombies.
     The message was sent during a power outage at about 1:45 a.m., but it also warned of “zombie alert for Lake Worth and Terminus,” potentially referencing the city in the zombie TV show “The Walking Dead.”
     “There are now far less than seven-thousand-three-hundred-eighty customers involved due to extreme zombie activity,” the notice said.

Then on Facebook as reported by Ross, Mr. Ben Kerr, the City’s Public Information Officer posted this message:


     “I want to reiterate that Lake Worth does not have any zombie activity currently and apologize for the system message.”
     According to the post, Kerr said 7,880 customers were affected and that power was restored within 27 minutes.
     Push alerts have become common in our cellphone driven age, and this wasn’t the first to startle those who receive it.
     In February, the National Weather Service sent out a monthly “test” notice as practice for warnings about tsunamis. Some of those agencies, including the AccuWeather service, responded by sending alerts to their customers saying a storm was imminent.
     In January, an error sent a warning about an imminent ballistic-missle threat to residents of Hawaii.


So now you know. When anyone brings up the news referring to that erroneous push alert about “ZOMBIES” in this little City of Lake Worth you know the whole story. Well. At least until this City issues a press release. Stay tuned all you zombies.