This seems to be National Library Week at the IAJ. But we are especially in sympathy with the concerns raised by Victoria McCargar, associate technology editor at the Los Angeles Times, concerns she writes about in The Sybold Report addressing the issue “Following the Trail of the Disappearing Data.”
The piece lays out the very real issues facing not just institutions of journalism but, we believe, the fabric of democracy. Though McCargar is talking about newspapers, her arguments should be applied to ALL journalism institutions. There's no reason — except short-sightedness — that broadcast operations have any less responsibility to maintaining information patrimony. (Well, maybe they do: they long ago dropped having real news operations because, gee, that would cut into shareholder returns.)