Neil Mara columns
Neil Mara is an experienced journalist and recently a technology director at the McClatchy newspaper group. In his 2019–2020 RJI fellowship project, he works with executives at U.S. media companies, and news tech providers, to test innovative approaches to stem the loss of born-digital news content that’s vanishing from public access due to technology and industry upheaval. Mara’s project aims to preserve irreplaceable content, and examine ways this unique content can support the digital transformation of news publishing and enrich the historical record.
News archives: The untapped resource Part 3
This excerpt from Neil Mara’s research report highlights the top selections from each of the five categories of examples showing how newsrooms are using the content of their news archives to their benefit.
News archives: The untapped resource Part 2
In talking with more than a hundred news editors and reporters, managers and specialists across the industry for this research, Neil Mara found great examples of tangible benefits that newsrooms gain from their archives.
News archives: The untapped resource Part 1
News archives are a resource not often discussed in newsrooms today. The once rich repositories of carefully preserved news and research data, tended by trained librarians and staff experts are mostly gone now or hanging on by a thread.
Afro-American’s archives reveal the fight for Black women’s right to vote — and the battles beyond
The Black women of Baltimore weren’t content to simply celebrate the ratification of the 19th Amendment, 100 years go this month. They intended to use its power. With only two months to prepare, suffrage leaders immediately began organizing to educate other Black women about how they could take advantage of this new right in the … Continued
Journalists uncover lessons from the 1918 pandemic useful in covering COVID-19
As readers of The Charlotte Observer found out on a recent Sunday, the common story of how the city escaped major illness and death in the pandemic of 1918 had one big problem: It just wasn’t true.
He Had It Coming: How archives keep giving, almost a century later
When Marianne Mather visited the archives in the Chicago Tribune, what she found inspired her to co-author a book, “He Had It Coming: Four Murderous Women and the Reporter Who Immortalized Their Stories”
Print archives show past impeachments. Where will we go to find the history being made today?
After Trump released a partial transcript of the call with Ukraine, Washington Post readers were treated to an almost exact parallel from 45 years ago. “That time Nixon released doctored transcripts during Watergate.”