Saving the Gothamist archives from journalism's 'billionaire problem'
Parker Higgins
November 8, 2017
Thenecessity for these tools became apparent Thursday, when thebillionaire owner of those sites abruptly
shut them downafteremployees voted to unionize. That decision created two distinctlosses: cities across the country lost a critical
source of both continuing and historical news,and scores of working journalists faced the disappearance of years oftheir stories—and with it, the portfolios they would need topresent in the hunt for new work.
Oneof these two crises appeared to be mitigated a day later when thearchived sites were restored at their original locations. But thedaylong scramble for copies of the stories drove home theprecariousness of much online reporting and the need for a morecomprehensive approach to solving that problem.
Iwitnessed
that scramble firsthandwhen,in the hours after the Gothamist network and DNAInfo sites wentoffline, I initiated one of severaleffortsfrom
technologiststohelp affected journalists retrieve copies of their stories fromrepositories such as the Internet Archive's invaluable WaybackMachine. The response was overwhelming.
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Perhapsmore surprising, though, was that even after the sites came backonline the demand did not diminish. Over the past week, as a Freedomof the Press Foundation special project, I have provided dozens ofaffected journalists with tens of thousands of PDFs of their ownwork.
Today,we’re releasing the tools we created for that purpose as freesoftware under the MIT
licensesothey can be adapted for use with other sites or in other situations.With a few alterations, many journalists can use this tool to createan archived version of their entire portfolio.
Ofcourse, these scripts only solve part of the archiving problem.Certainly, it’s essential that working journalists be able tocontinue working in the field even if their employer is forced tocease operations. That requires a persistent portfolio—and untilthat persistence is baked
into the Web's infrastructure,this project may be only a temporary path forward.
Still,the fact that moneyed interests can take an archive of journalismoffline represents a major censorship threat to a functioning freepress. The archives for Gothamist and DNAinfo were restored after awidespread public backlash, but there's no guarantee that will be thecase in the future—or even that these stories will all stay onlineindefinitely.
The"billionaire problem" facing the free press, memorablycaptured in the documentary Nobody
Speak,is exacerbated by the relative fragility of Web media. It should notbe the case that an attack on an outlet can so completely jeopardizeits past.
Atthe Freedom of the Press Foundation, we've appreciated thisopportunity to assist working journalists keeping a record of theirown career, and we will continue to look for ways we can help solvethe root problem.
Special
thanks to Victoria
Kirstfor
her assistance with gotham-grabber.