Newspaper Group to Stop Microfilming
Back on topic with bad news: The Community Newspaper Company, which is owned by the Boston Herald, is notifying public libraries that they will no longer be filming the 88 newspapers they publish in 140 communities in Massachusetts. As far as I know, archives are not available electronically through a vendor, such as LexisNexis or Factiva, and stories are not kept on the Web site for very long. Without the microfilm, what will become the historical record of these papers? Is the company shooting itself in the foot by halting the filming? Many publications consider their microfilm to be their historical record. What other archives of the newspapers are there? How will this effect public libraries and access to those newspaper archives?
Addendum 1/7/06: According to a post on PressThink, CNC plans to offer a digital product in place of their microfilm.
October 2nd, 2003 at 8:43 pm
Grr. This is so bad, and CNC is bad for a lot of reasons. With a very few exceptions (notably the Somerville Journal) the CNC takeover of nearly every suburban newspaper in the Boston area has led to a decline in both the quantity and quality of news coverage in those areas. I blog more about it here. Most people say that a blog can’t compete with a newspaper, but that’s exactly what Robert Winters does with his Cambridge Journal, an amateur effort which beats the “professional” Cambridge Tab hands down.