9/11 Stories Attract Masses To Website

9/11 Stories Attract Masses To Website

http://www.wicz.com/news2005/viewarticle.asp?a=308

12/7/2005

When Fox 40 aired two 9/11 conspiracy reports last week, we had no idea how much national attention we would gain.

This very website, wicz.com, averages approximately 1,000 to 1,500 hits on any average day.

However, since the 9/11 stories aired last Friday, we have had more than 15,000 hits on those articles alone. That figure includes between 80 and 100 people viewing the video broadcast at any given second.

As a result, we've crashed not one, but TWO web servers. In addition, our Foxfire question averages between 150 responses per day -- dwarfing the previous figure of 4 or 5 daily replies.

So, why all the attention?

We can only assume it involves the following three factors:

1. We're a Fox affiliate reporting on a topic many news consumers feel is often suppressed by our national counterpart.
2. Numberous 9/11 conspiracy theory websites picked up on our broadcast and supplied direct links to the site.
3. Perhaps the factor with the biggest impact: several sites that linked our story around the country discovered that just one day after we broadcasted the 9/11 report, it disappeared from the Fox 40 website. Those who applauded our report then assumed that the U.S. government, or higher-ups at the Fox network, or some other "dark force" had killed the story as part of a conspiracy to suppress the truth.

However, what actually happened was far less sinister.

The traffic generated from these reports was so overwhelming that it caused the server to crash. Our web administration had no choice but to move the story to another server which could handle all of the hits.

Despite deep suspicions to the contrary, this is what really occurred.