The opportunity to advance the preservation of born-digital news is real. That’s my takeaway from the Dodging the Memory Hole: Saving Born-digital News Content forum.

Read more at the Reynolds Journalism Institute blog: That’s engagement: Forum participants plot course to preserve born-digital news content

Videos from “Dodging the Memory Hole: Saving Born-digital News Content,” held at RJI on Nov. 10–11, 2014.

Read more at the Reynolds Journalism Institute blog: Videos from Dodging the Memory Hole: Saving Born-digital News Content

In this video, Tom Warhover, executive editor for innovation at the Columbia Missourian, discussed the devastating 2002 loss of more than 15 years worth of content at the Missourian. Archival specialists and journalists will address this problem for the news industry at “Dodging the Memory Hole: Saving Born-digital News Content.”

Read more at the Reynolds Journalism Institute blog: ‘Losing a piece of you’: The fragility of digital news archives

Print stories can be lost, but digital stories last forever, captured for eternity in some nebulous internet ether or on a hard drive in a desk drawer. At least, that?s the vague theory assumed by many producers and consumers of digital news. Once something is posted or backed up, it never really disappears?and if that?s true, archiving digital work seems less urgent. That line of thinking is exactly why so many news organizations risk losing years? worth of stories. As we move deeper into the digital era, we?ve recognized the need to preserve and digitize print content, but we?re still in the early stages of understanding how we safely archive our digital news.

Read more at the Reynolds Journalism Institute blog: Minus proper archives, news outlets risk losing years of backstories forever

Today, digital archives and ?computer-assisted journalism? are commonplace. Almost all stories, photos, videos and related news assets are now created digitally ? so one might think electronic archives are universal. But it?s not necessarily so. Digital archives may not be as complete or long-lasting as they could/should be.

Read more at the Reynolds Journalism Institute blog: Digital archives not as complete or long-lasting as they should be — or could be

Journalists are dependent upon access to back files for research and context, but those back files may no longer be there. Almost all news content created in the U.S. today is digital, but digital content is even more fragile than print.

Read more at the Reynolds Journalism Institute blog: Digital preservation: Why is this important to me?

In 2002, the Columbia Missourian suffered a server crash. Their backups were hold in an obsolete version of a CMS.

Read more at the Reynolds Journalism Institute blog: Saving the news: When your server crashes, you could lose decades of digital news content – forever

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 RJI and University of Missouri Libraries.

Read more at the Reynolds Journalism Institute blog: Content Matters: An Interview with Edward McCain of the Reynolds Journalism Institute

Edward McCain was deeply concerned as he watched the Tucson (Ariz.) Citizen, a newspaper he had once worked for, close its doors without a good system in place to preserve and access its print or online archives.

Read more at the Reynolds Journalism Institute blog: RJI,  University of Missouri Libraries team up to address digital archiving of news

A mandate to preserve — a white paper (PDF) — was produced for the Newspaper Archive Summit Network by Victoria McCargar, veteran journalist, archivist and digital curation consultant.

Read more at the Reynolds Journalism Institute blog: Newspaper Archive Summit white paper suggests next steps for stakeholders