As news media organizations hustle to publish today’s news, it can be a struggle for them to think about how to keep their digital content from disappearing. Today, the news industry faces competition from other digital media platforms, political challenges to media credibility, and, most of all, financial viability. Digital news preservation may not be top of mind, but it SHOULD be.
A team based at the University of Missouri has been studying this particular issue and potential solutions and for the past 18 months has been digging deeply into the issues that surround digital preservation, thanks to a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and support from the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute at MU. Now they’re finally ready to share their findings in the report, “Endangered but not too late: The state of digital news preservation.”
The new report details current policies and practices at contemporary news organizations and provides concrete recommendations for addressing the issues at play. The report also takes a close look at the key factors that affect the ability of news organizations to save their born-digital content for as long as they need or want it. The report is the result of an estimated 188 hours of interviews at 29 news organizations, four news tech companies, two news aggregators and five memory institutions.
Here are just a few of the key findings from the new report:
Read the full research report: rjionline.org/preservenews
Read expert commentary from Edward McCain, the digital curator of journalism for University Libraries and the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute: https://showme.missouri.edu/2021/expert-comment-why-its-vital-to-preserve-history-with-digital-news/
