Knight grant will help RJI develop born-digital-news preservation model

A $35,000 grant from the Knight News Challenge on libraries will help University of Missouri Libraries and the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute develop a long-term model to protect born-digital news content from being lost forever. Monetizing newspaper content is one approach to saving the nation’s first draft of history, says Edward McCain, digital curator of … Continued

How the Denver Public Library ended up owning the Rocky Mountain News archive

Among the many stories shared at the recent “Dodging the Memory Hole” forum at the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute, none were more gripping and significant than the tale of how the Denver Public Library ended up owning the Rocky Mountain News archive. Like any good investigative report, the backstory is important to understand because … Continued

Videos from Dodging the Memory Hole: Saving Born-digital News Content

In today’s digital newsrooms, a software/hardware crash can wipe out decades of text, photos, videos and applications in a fraction of a second. Digital archives can easily become obsolete due to evolving formats and digital systems used by modern media, not to mention media failure, bit-rot and link-rot. One recent survey found that most American … Continued

‘Losing a piece of you’: The fragility of digital news archives

In 2002, The Columbia Missourian received a shock when it lost a significant portion of its digital archives. A server crash wiped out 15 years of precious and painstaking work of journalists, photographers and editors. The data loss also weakened the paper’s link to the who, how, what, when and why of changes in mid-Missouri … Continued

Content Matters: An Interview with Edward McCain of the Reynolds Journalism Institute

For this installment of the Content Matters interview series of the National Digital Stewardship Alliance Content Working Group I interviewed Edward McCain, digital curator of journalism at the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute and University of Missouri Libraries. Missouri University Libraries joined the NDSA this past summer. Ashenfelder: What is RJI’s relationship to the Missouri … Continued