Thanks to the Internet Archive, the history of American newspapers is more searchable than ever

cheryl

cheryl

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Thanks to the Internet Archive, the history of American newspapers is more searchable than ever - Nieman Lab

A stroll through the archives of Editor & Publisher shows an industry with moments of glory and shame — and evidence that not all of today’s problems are new.

My two intellectual loves are history and journalism — alternately, history and its first draft — and I’m always happy to see the two overlap. That’s the case with word that the Internet Archive has digitized nearly the entire back catalog of Editor & Publisher — for decades the bible of the newspaper industry — and made it searchable to all.

I may be one of the youngest journalists to have experienced E&P in its period of pre-Internet glory, when it was the best (and often only) place to find out about job openings at newspapers. I remember, as a cub reporter at The (Toledo) Blade in 1997, going in with a couple of coworkers for a shared subscription so we could see who was hiring. The Internet knocked E&P off its perch, offering free-or-cheap competition for both job listings and media gossip and giving it the fusty smell of yesterday’s media, though it’s shown some signs of life under new owner Mike Blinder.
 
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