Tag Archives: newspaper

Internet Archive and Partners Select Local Newsrooms from Across the US to Participate in the Today’s News for Tomorrow Program

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Internet Archive, Poynter Institute, and Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) are pleased to announce the first cohort of newsrooms to join the Today’s News for Tomorrow program. With support from Press Forward, Today’s News for Tomorrow will bring together news organizations and memory institutions to address the urgent challenge of local news preservation and perpetual access. The project will create a national framework for digital preservation that serves newsrooms’ “immediate internal needs and communities’ future information needs,” according to Press Forward.

“Journalism is the first draft of history, and we’re at risk of losing that history due to changes in a newsroom’s technology, ownership, and even outside pressure to erase it,” said Kristen Hare, program instructor and Poynter’s director for craft and local news. “Today’s News for Tomorrow will help local journalists and newsrooms learn what we’re up against and make sure the first draft of news is still around for future generations.”

Participating newsrooms will receive access to Internet Archive’s services, tools, and infrastructure, share public local news resources through a unified local news access portal, and participate in knowledge-sharing opportunities centered around local news archiving. 

The first cohort will be made up of digital local news publications. Future cohorts in 2026 will be tailored to meet the preservation needs of print newspapers, public media organizations, and independent journalists. Members of the initial cohort were selected through a competitive application process and include:

The Berkeley Scanner (Berkeley, CA)

The Jefferson County Beacon (Port Townsend, WA)

Cityside (Berkeley, CA)

Athens County Independent (Athens, OH)

Hoy en Delaware (Wilmington, DE)

Bucks County Beacon (Warminster, PA)

Golden Today (Golden, CO)

The 51st (Washington, DC)

15 West (Chicago, IL)

The Rapidian (Grand Rapids, MI)

My Tarboro Today (Tarboro, NC)

Outlier Media (Detroit, MI)

Hmong Daily News (Sacramento, CA)

Front Range Focus (Denver, CO)

Lake County News (Lucerne, CA)

The Providence Eye (Providence, RI)

Grandview Independent (Richmond, CA)

The Well News (Washington, DC)

Prism Reports (Oakland, CA)

El Paso Matters (El Paso, TX)

The Oaklandside (Oakland, CA)

The Current GA (Savannah, GA)

Germantown Info Hub (Philadelphia, PA)

Evanston Now (Evanston, IL)

Conecta Arizona (Phoenix, AZ)

Charlottesville Tomorrow (Charlottesville, VA)

Wisconsin Watch (Madison, WI)

BK Reader (Brooklyn, NY)

Black Girl Nerds (Virginia Beach, VA)

Lede New Orleans (New Orleans, LA)

U.S. Press Freedom Tracker (Brooklyn, NY)

Wired (New York City, NY)

El Central Hispanic News (Detroit, MI)

Newsrooms are encouraged to apply to join future cohorts. Newsrooms publishing print newspapers should apply to join the next cohort by April 1. All other organizations may apply at any time to join additional cohorts. Questions about the program can be directed to the program team at [email protected]. 

Boston Phoenix Rises Again With New Online Access

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For more than 40 years, The Boston Phoenix was the city’s largest alternative weekly in covering local politics, arts, and culture.

The Boston Phoenix, Volume 2, Issue 44 – October 30, 1973

“It was really a pretty legendary paper. The style of the writing and the quality of writers were nationally known,” said Carly Carioli, who started at the newspaper as an intern in 1993 and became its last editor-in-chief.

With the advent of online advertising, it struggled like many independent newspapers to compete. In 2013, the Phoenix folded.

After the publication shut down, owner Stephen Mindich wanted the public to be able to access back issues of the Phoenix. The complete run of the newspaper from 1973 to 2013 was donated to Northeastern University’s special collections. The family signed copyright over the university. 

Librarians led a crowdsourcing project to create a digital index of all the articles and authors, which was helpful for historians and others in their research, said Giordana Mecagni, head of special collections and university archivist. Northeastern had inquired about digitizing the collection, but it was cost prohibitive. 

As it turns out, the Internet Archive owned the master microfilm for the Phoenix and it put the full collection online in a separate collection: The Boston Phoenix 1973-2013. Initially, the back issues were only available for one patron to check out at a time through Controlled Digital Lending. Once Northeastern learned about the digitized collection, it extended rights to the Archive to allow the Phoenix to be downloaded without controls.

Read The Boston Phoenix at the Internet Archive

“All of a sudden it was free to the public. It was wonderful,” Mecagni said. “We get tons and tons of research requests for various  aspects of the Phoenix, so having it available online for free for people to download is a huge help for us.” 

Inquiries range from someone trying to track down a classified ad through which they met their spouse, or an individual looking up an article about a band. The paper was a leader in writing groundbreaking stories about the LGBTQ community, the AIDS crisis, race and the Vietnam War—often issues not covered in the mainstream press. “Making that coverage public is adding an immense amount to the historical record that would not be there otherwise,” said Carioli. He said he appreciates the preservation and easy access to back issues, as do other journalists, researchers and academics.

“It’s a dream come true,” said Carioli of the Internet Archive’s digitization of the newspaper. “The Phoenix was invaluable in its own time, and I think it will be invaluable for a new generation who are just discovering it now. It was a labor of love then and the fact that it’s online now is huge for Boston, but also for anyone who’s interested in independent media and culture.”