NDSA:March 22, 2012

News Team Meeting Minutes

March 22, 2012

Attendees: Lori Donovan (for Kristine), John, James, Cathy, Christie, and Abbie

Call attendees talked a bit about their efforts with news preservation so far;

Cathy talked about the sample content case study sent by email, this represents work they've done at UNT. This one covers eprint/pdf versions of printed newspapers. She talked through the idea of the case study. They've joined some Texas press associations and are attending conferences to reach out. There is interest in the local newspapers in preservation. Big newspapers not as concerned.

Abbie reported on efforts at LC to do a pilot with Newspaper Association of America with our Copyright Office - there is an eprint component but also a web harvesting pilot that has recently happened. LC has also tried in the past to ask permission to archive news sites, but getting permission has been tough.

James reported on activities by CRL to come up with models/approaches to preservation [James, I missed some of the details, can you fill in?]

John said that at Michigan, they've been talking to the University Student newspapers, there's an effort to digitize those (Cathy said at UNT, too). There's an effort also to contact photographers from the past to get them to contribute photos.

Christie said at NLM they are just getting started but they are focusing on topical areas and are interested in things like news related to health care reform. Smaller publishers of content who may not have abilities to preserve.

The group then talked about what other content areas we might want to tackle. The list so far:

• Current newspapers
• Digital eprints
• web sites of newspapers
• News feeds
• Citizen Journalism and community news
• Hyperlocal news
• News blogs
• Broadcast TV (radio?) news

We realize the challenges may be different depending on the size of the news organization, so we need to keep that in mind as we proceed.

Our next steps:

• Mull over this list to see if there are others to include, if we can group things or combine into areas. Recognizing there may be some similarities but then differences with each type.
• Come up with samples for each of the types on our list.
• Share list and samples with NDSA-ALL to see if other members have additional ideas.
• Start tackling another content case study or two together

Next meeting was not set yet; we'll work by email until one is set.

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Current newspapers -digital eprints and websites of newspapers - current papers for both of these formats.

Examples:

• websites for major newspapers such as NY, LA, Dallas, etc. papers
• smaller community papers who may have turned to only web based publication of their newspapers
• Eprints are done by every newspaper that prints copies to sell /for subscribers.

We probably need to work with all sizes of newspapers to see if any publishers are preserving this version and offer help when needed. [AG: maybe we can create different case studies based on size, there may be differnet challenges with each? or at leat define what the challenges might be?] Need to define what is a major newspaper? Do we treat separately newspapers that are only digital vs. in print and digital?

News feeds

• AP content?
• Any news organization that has RSS feeds that are shot out to aggregators for hosting

Citizen Journalism and Community news

Examples:

• ibrattleboro.com
• http://www.nowpublic.com/
• http://www.digitaljournal.com/
• http://www.newsvine.com/
• http://www.everyblock.com/ (and look - possible stakeholders! http://www.rjionline.org/block-block-community-news-summit-2011-participants)
• the patch.com sites
• http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/07/offthebus-the-huffington-_n_1080209.html
• http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2005869,00.html
• http://tpssvoice.com - recently announced they are suspending print, going all digital
• http://annarborchronicle.com (entirely online - intense local focus; professional editor)
• http://annarbor.com (long running print newspaper reborn online - print reduced to once a week; analog clippings and photos collections donated to Ann Arbor District Library)

what is the defining difference between news blogs and community sites? includes hyperlocal. Born Digital only, not print produced by the community? Word Press - less about the platform more about the content being served/who the audience is blogs independent of other publications

• adding an opt-in option for preservation on blog software
• find them and get permission to capture them

need more examples

user generated content - need to engage local papers (how do they see content as part of the whole). Sites that are just user generated. slash dot - news driven that results in long threads from the community

Broadcast news We need to bring in someone who better understands the process of capturing this and TV news programs… Both IA and SCOLA are doing some of this. LOC A/V center?