Yesterday morning I received a Facebook notification from the Kansas City Star (which I’m a friend of) which carried a link to TMZ that reported that Michael Jackson had just suffered a heart-attack and died.

Being too early to even start contemplating going to work (I’m an early riser), I began to follow the story – not on Twitter, but on Facebook. It turned out to be quite a story, and not just because the “King of Pop” had died.

TMZ called the death first. Most Australian newspaper URLs continued reporting he had suffered a reported heart-attack and was rushed to hospital. But slowly, via my network on Face Book, friends from around the globe started confirming that the death had been posted on “legitimate” news sites. At that point, the Internet did a funny thing I haven’t experienced for almost eight years. It slowed down.

Eight years ago was 9/11. I was summoned back to work on the first day of a 10-day vacation (sometimes it sucks being a journalist) to organize visual coverage for the paper. After the first reports of one plane hitting a World Trade Centre tower, we found that news sites were taking longer and longer to load. Eventually, we had to choose the low-graphics version of the BBC to get anything to come up at all. That day, the world-wide web virtually came to a stand-still.

Yesterday morning, for a brief time, the ‘net suffered a deja-vu. I commented on the phenomenon on Face Book. My friends across the globe confirmed that their news sites had slowed down considerably.

Then one journalist friend in London piped up with some interesting statistics just tweeted (twitted) by Slate’s Jack Shafer. My friend wrote, “media commentator Jack Shafer of Slate tweeted last night that 15% of all tweets mentioned Michael Jackson. Swine flu and Iran never went over 5%. 7 out of the 10 trending topics on Twitter as I write are Michael Jackson. (Farrahs is #4, Iran is #5 and #9)…”

Australia’s Channel 9 extended broadcast of the Today Show by an hour to continue live coverage of the MJ story. But even they were relying on Twitter for updates. Which might account for their entertainment reporter’s erroneous reporting of American actor Jeff Goldblum’s death in New Zealand.

Happily, like most Australians, I had to get to work. Tearing myself away from the computer wasn’t difficult. I would miss my friends’ comments and anecdotes, but the news URLs were all loading faster, and I felt like we’d ridden out the storm. Driving through Brisbane, I listed to MJ’s music on virtually every radio station but classical (but I can’t be sure that someone hasn’t adapted Thriller for a string quartet). Last night the TV tabloid shows featured MJ specials. But by then I was knackered. I went to bed early.

Yesterday, a journalist friend in London wrote, “I can just picture the compositors frantically pulling the red swimsuit off tomorrow’s front pages… if there are compositors any more…” This morning, a journalist friend from Baltimore wrote, “happy to report that there are TWO Iran stories on the front of the Wash. Post. Sure, MJ is above the fold, but not as big as I expected. And even Farrah made it on the front, albeit just a little pic at the bottom with an obit teaser, but still…”

When I get to the airport I’ll see how our press plays it.

UPDATE: In the meantime, here’s Newseum’s top 10 newspaper covers for the day. Including one designed by my mate Ginger at the Vancouver Sun!