Freedom of the Press Foundation is Using Archive-It to Archive Alternative Press Publications Threatened by Wealthy Buyers; Gawker.com Collection Now Live

From the Freedom of the Press Foundation:

Freedom of the Press Foundation is launching an online archives collection in partnership with Archive-It, a service developed by the Internet Archive to help organizations preserve online content. Our collection, focusing on news outlets we deem to be especially vulnerable to “billionaire problem,” aims to preserve sites in their entirety before their archives can be taken down or manipulated.
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To start our collection, we used Archive-It to crawl the entirety of Gawker.com, which we conducted amidst speculation that its archives might be purchased by a hostile party. Reported suitors have included Peter Thiel—who bankrolled the legal campaign that ultimately crushed the site—and more recently Mike Cernovich, who the site once described as a “D-list right-winger.”

We also captured a copy of L.A. Weekly shortly after its new owners—the identity of whom was initially concealed, even from its employees—restructured the operation and eliminated most of the writing jobs. At the time, one former employee published a short article titled “Who Owns L.A. Weekly,” which has since been removed from the site—though you can still view the version we captured.
Since our crawl of the site, former employees have reported that stories are being “republished,” validating our concerns about the integrity of the archive.

Read the Complete Post
Direct to “Threatened Outlets” Digital Archive (via Archive-It)
Note: Unlike the Wayback Machine, Archive-It collections are keyword searchable.

Filed under: Archives and Special Collections, Associations and Organizations, Digital Collections, Digital Preservation, Jobs, News