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As Hurricane Sandy churned toward the Northeast, wireless carriers spent the weekend battle-proofing their networks.

Verizon readied repair equipment, Sprint engineers deployed backup generators just outside the storm path and AT&T installed new batteries at cell sites. The nation's three major carriers shut down most retail stores in the mid-Atlantic region and New England. With most preparations complete, it's now time to wait and see what havoc Sandy brings. Carriers readied a fleet of emergency equipment with some peculiar, farm-like names: COWs (Cells On Wheels), COLTs (Cells On Light Trucks), and GOaTs (Generators on Trailers). These temporary cell towers, generators, diesel trucks and sand bags are stationed along the storm's edge, and action teams are on standby to roll in with them as soon as something goes down. The carriers' monitoring centers are watching their networks for any signs of trouble. Flooding and winds can sometimes threaten cell towers, but most are strong enough to handle the worst that even a Category 5 hurricane can bring. Sprint's towers, for instance, are built to withstand winds of up to 110 miles per hour, a company spokeswoman said.

Hurricane Sandy hasn't hit land yet, but the traffic at The Weather Channel's digital properties is already blowing towards record numbers. On October 28, the company saw 105 million page views (the fifth highest page view ever) and 40 million video streams, which the most in one day ever. It was also a top 10 day for daily visits, with 21 million visits, and visitors, with 14 million. Judging by early traffic on Oct 29, the company expects page views to set a record.

In September 2005, one month after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, the Minority Media and Telecommunications Council filed a joint petition with the Federal Communications Commission, urging the FCC to take action “now to ensure that emergency warnings are made available to non-English speaking persons.” More than seven years later, as the East Coast braces for “Frankenstorm” Hurricane Sandy, we are reminded that the FCC has still failed to implement a comprehensive Multilingual Emergency Alert System (EAS) to make sure countless lives aren’t lost in avoidable accidents during natural disasters, as they were during Hurricane Katrina.

Even if you don’t follow professional cycling, you’ve probably heard about the almost epic fall-from-grace experienced by former Tour de France superstar Lance Armstrong, who was shown to have boosted his performance with illicit drugs and has since had all of his previous awards removed. Was it an investigative report from a sports magazine or a high-profile mainstream journalistic outlet that finally brought this sports super-hero down? No.

As New York Times media writer David Carr points out in a perceptive post, amateur or “citizen” journalists using Twitter and little-known cycling blogs as their platform were the ones who were the most responsible for bringing the story to light. In the wake of the decision by cycle-racing authorities to strip Armstrong of his awards and ban him from the sport, a number of outlets that were devoted to covering the cyclist admitted that they had been suspicious of Armstrong and his performance for years, but weren’t able to prove that he had been “doping” and therefore weren’t able to write about it. As Carr notes in his post, apart from a few standouts who questioned Armstrong’s performance publicly, “for the most part, the journalists who seemed to know the most about professional cycling told us the least.” Why did this continue for so long? One likely reason was that the Armstrong story was so incredibly inspirational — an athlete who fights back after cancer and not only becomes healthy again but becomes a world champion. But there were other reasons as well, including the fact that media outlets focusing on the sport were reluctant to poison the well, since Armstrong was such an amazing story.