Deep rich archives are necessary to provide context for future journalistic stories. Unfortunately, best practices of preservation and ensuring public access are taking a back seat. As news organizations across the country struggle to survive, fewer and fewer are able to put resources into proper preservation of digital news or into the staffing needed to manage news archives and tap them for the benefit of readers. This threatens the very existence of the first-draft of our daily history.
This is what motivated the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute to organize a five-year conference series called “Dodging the Memory Hole,” to fund a fellowship with the intent to seek out and share the best and most innovative ideas out there that leverage a newsroom’s archived content and to launch a new Mellon Foundation-funded study this year to analyze how technology supports or inhibits news preservation best practices.
Read more about the importance of digital archives
