As Eureka Reporter online readers have already discovered to their distress, or at least puzzlement, if you try to summon the recently laid-to-rest newspaper you will encounter this cold note:
The Eureka Reporter newspaper has closed its doors and is no longer in business. If you would like to speak with someone regarding business dealings you may have with The Eureka Reporter, please call 707-476-8000. Western Web, the commercial printing plant, is open and operating in full force. They can be reached at 707-444-6236. Thank you ~
Not only has the ER ceased publication, its publicly accessible digital remains have been, apparently, cremated and cast to the wind. So what evidence is there that the ER really happened, other than that inexplicable, ghostly scrap that debuted in the editorial pages of the Times-Standard this week? I mean, aside from the bands of hungry unemployed creative folk roaming the precarious landscape.
Hard copies. You can find a near-complete set of hard copies of the paper going back to Day One at just one place: the Humboldt State University library.
Laurie Maxwell-Chamberlain, in Periodicals at HSU, said they are missing one copy — May 11, 2008. “Do you have it?” she asked.
If you do, reader, maybe you could donate it to HSU.
Other than that, College of the Redwoods’ hard copies of the ER go back about three months. The main branch of the Humboldt County Library, in Eureka, has about six months worth, as well as of other local newspapers. But while some papers, such as the Times-Standard, get microfilmed after about six months, the Eureka Reporter hasn’t been microfilmed by anyone (that we know of). Not by the county library. Not by HSU. Not by CR.
Too expensive. And, besides, it was always archived online so why would it need to be microfilmed?
Indeed.
This article appears in Without the Mill.
It was bad enough when the ER revamped its website last December which broke existing links and rendered the archives user-unfriendly.
But scrapping the whole thing is unconscionable. It shows how little Arkley and Singleton care for the work of the reporters and the value of the archive to the community.
I might have an old copy that I wouldn’t mind donating. I’ll dig through my clips.
-Ashley Bailey
Sort of like not backing up your hard drive. One little blip (in this case Arkley and Singleton) and all is lost.
Garrett. Where the hell are you? Didn’t you keep any backups?
Yes, we did – we were contractually obligated to. They were difficult to make, however (for technical reasons I won’t elaborate on), and when we tried to make a final back-up a couple days before D-Day, we weren’t able to successfully make a complete one.
But… all that content is copyrighted. We’re not going to share it because it’s not ours and we don’t want to get sued. It’s as simple as that. Sorry, but lawsuits just aren’t a whole lot of fun (as the ER folks themselves can probably attest).
Seeing the site go down was as much a surprise to us as it was to everyone else – we didn’t pull the switch. That was all SecNat’s IT crew (who, AFAIK, also made their own back-ups).
Hopefully, someone at SN will make the right decision and bring the site back online. But if they want to take it down forever, it’s their prerogative to do so.
Also, it’s probably not much help, but I noticed that Archive.org does have the site in its cache, though the most recent version seems to be from February:
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://eurekareporter.com/
Let’s hope the electronic archives still exist somewhere, on a server hard drive. Finding it hard to believe they were erased.
So it turns out I don’t have May 11 edition. Bummer. I don’t know what happened to the morgue. Most likely turning into pulp by now.
I said this earlier on NCJ.com. I got a little more info from the posts and comments here but I will repost my comments here for you guys.
BRING BACK THE WEBSITE. RENEGOTIATE THE AGREEMENT ABOUT THE WEBSITE
In 2008 and our digital age there is NO REASON for 5 years worth of an electronic archive to be GONE FOREVER. I hope it is at least backed up offline for at the very least research.
If it is in fact GONE FOREVER that is a great disservice to our community and to our future generations. I agree if the e-archives are in fact gone forever. Paper Archives should go to the Humboldt Historical Society and to The Humboldt County Library and it should all be microfilmed.