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I have a little folder of bookmarks that relate to important or useful news stories.
On most of the world's news websites, these links remain active in perpetuity, allowing me to quickly load up an old story so as to refresh my memory or get a quote or two when needed.
By adopting a policy of permanency for news stories, good news website provide the world with a valuable archive of past events that will surely become a trove of valuable insight into the history and culture of the world as time marches on.
Sadly, the NZH don't seem to be interested in preserving the past.
This morning when I went to recall a story they'd published some time ago I got a 404 error.
I tried a couple of other links (from just a couple of years ago) and the same thing happened.
What the?
Now I know that the news business isn't as lucrative as it once was but surely things aren't so bad that they're culling old stories to make space for new ones (or the press releases and advertorials that masquerade as "stories" these days)?
Seriously -- why are we effectively deleting our history and denying future generations the opportunity to browse through the past?
Is it a matter of "rights"? Were the stories perhaps from an overseas newswire service that only provides the rights for a fixed period of time or while you remain subscribed to their expensive service?
I don't know -- but if that's the case then the NZH really ought to think twice about subscribing to any service with such draconian restrictions on the archiving of material that's been bought and paid for.
Interestingly enough, I found the stories I was looking for on other overseas news sites so I doubt it was a rights issue at all -- just a case of being rather scrooge-like.
Now many reading this might think that my complaint is somewhat trivial but I would argue to the contrary. We need our own archive of news stories (even international ones), presented from an NZ perspective. These news archives are not only important as a record of the events that have happened in the past but also as a way of viewing our nation's own perspective on such events.
Yes, The Telegraph, the BBC or CNN might carry coverage of the same events but they won't include the "kiwi perspective" that says so much about the way we see the world around us. This insight into the perspective of NZers is an incredibly valuable tool for documenting the social evolution of our country and its people -- and we're destroying it!
While we might be tempted to think of the Net only in terms of what it delivers here and now, future generations will look at it as a fantastic "time capsule" into the past -- but only if we stop deleting our history in the way that NZH seems to be doing.
Of course *we* can't archive those pages for future generations because that would be a breach of copyright -- but hopefully the Web harvesting initiative undertaken by the National Library will take up the slack by way of its Collections service.
Sadly however, it seems that the collection of NZH editions only spans the range from 1863 through to 1945.
Where are the digital editions?
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