Nieman Lab reports that more than 340 U.S. local news outlets are now limiting the Internet Archive’s ability to access and preserve their journalism. The coverage builds on an earlier Nieman Lab investigation that found major publishers, including The New York Times, The Guardian, and USA Today, had begun restricting the Internet Archive, citing concerns that AI companies could scrape the nonprofit’s repositories for training data. The new analysis indicates the restrictions are expanding from larger national publishers to local sites. Nieman Lab says many of the affected outlets are owned by several of the largest local news groups, including USA Today Co., McClatchy, Advance Local, MediaNews Group, and Tribune Publishing, with some companies tied to Alden Global Capital. Local journalists argue that blocking Internet Archive access makes it harder to report using historical records, especially in areas they describe as “news deserts.” Meanwhile, the Internet Archive says it is engaging with concerns raised by publishers and is working with journalism organizations to train newsrooms on digital preservation. It points to a partnership with the Poynter Institute and Investigative Reporters and Editors to train local and national outlets on archiving strategies through 2027.
Over 340 U.S. local news sites limit Internet Archive access to their stories
Nieman Lab reports that more than 340 U.S. local news outlets are now limiting the Internet Archive’s ability to access and preserve their journalism. The coverage builds on an earlier Nieman Lab inve...
- Nieman Lab analysis finds more than 340 U.S. local news sites limit the Internet Archive’s access to their content.
- The initial restriction wave was reported earlier by Nieman Lab and involved major publishers including The New York Times, The Guardian, and USA Today Co.
- The stated motivation reported by sources centers on concerns that AI companies could scrape Internet Archive repositories for training data.
- Some of the affected local outlets are owned by major regional publishers such as USA Today Co., McClatchy, Advance Local, MediaNews Group, and Tribune Publishing.
- The Internet Archive says it is working with journalism groups to train newsrooms on digital archiving, including initiatives planned through 2027.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Techdirt: Earlier this year Nieman Lab broke the story that major news publishers, including The New York Times, The Guardian, and USA Today Co., had started blocking the Internet Archive for fear that AI companies might scrape the nonprofit's repositories for training data. As one of the last bastions of archival history, that is, in case you're not aware, not very good for the public interest. Four months later and Nieman Lab now notes that the number of news outlets blocking the archive has soared to around 340 organizations: "Our new analysis shows that more than 340 local news sites across the United States are now limiting the Internet Archive's ability to access and preserve their stories. Many sites in our sample are owned by five of the seven largest local news publishers in the country: USA Today Co., McClatchy, Advance Local, MediaNews Group, and Tribune Publishing. The latter two are both subsidiaries of the "vulture hedge fund" Alden Global Capital." [...] Regardless of motivation, hiding whatever local news remains behind paywalls, then blocking it from the Internet Archive, in turn makes it harder for everyone else to do real journalism that relies on the historical record, local journalists tell Nieman Lab: "I cover news within a larger news desert in New York's Rockland, Sullivan, and Rockland counties. This means I need to heavily rely on archival data of old news articles from now deceased, or zombie-fied, media outlets," wrote B.J. Mendelson, the editor of The Monroe Gazette newsletter, in one recent petition signed by over 200 journalists. "Without the Internet Archive, my [work] would be incredibly difficult to do." The Internet Archive says it is listening to the concerns raised by local news outlets, while also partnering with journalism groups to train hundreds of newsrooms on archival preservation: "In December, the Internet Archive partnered with the Poynter Institute and Investigative Reporters and Editors to train a cohort of 33 local and national news outlets on how to develop and implement an archiving strategy. The initiative, funded through a Press Forward grant, aims to train 300 newsrooms in digital preservation and in using the Internet Archive's services by the end of 2027." Read more of this story at Slashdot.
2 months agoIn January, Nieman Lab broke the story that major news publishers — including The New York Times, The Guardian, and USA Today Co. — had started blocking the Internet Archive due to concerns that AI companies might scrape the nonprofit’s repositories for training data. No news publisher has confirmed to Nieman Lab that an AI...
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