Ray Saintonge wrote:
geni wrote:
On 9/20/06, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
I guess as a reader I don't see the benefit in *not* covering everything. I agree there is a slant towards more coverage of recent news events, but that's simply because they're easier to cover. The solution, IMO, is not to cover recent events less, but to cover older events more. I want to know the equivalent of this stuff for other time periods! Were there short-lived but at the time massively-covered events in the 1890s, equivalent to today's frenzies over child kidnappings? What about the thousands of political scandals, major and minor, that have at various times shortened governments' tenures, forced cabinet reshuffles, etc., etc.? It's all good info we're missing!
Problem is that a lot of the data that would be useful in answering your question is stored on microfilm and there isn't really a quick way to scan that.
This is a Wikisource function, but that dosn't make it easier. I have most of the first 20 years of McClure's Magazine. It was a monthly that became famous for muckraking journalism, and exposing the behaviour of big companies and government administration in the pre WWI era. 1,200 pages per year for 20 years gives 24,000 pages, and is a daunting task. Weeklies and dailies don't make things any easier.
While it would certainly be nice to have it all scanned, I don't think it's necessary. We already cite lots of sources that aren't available on the internet---recently published books, journal articles, etc.---so I don't see why it would be a bigger problem that old news articles are only available in archives, on microfilm, or via digital subscription. Ain't nothin' wrong with citing sources that require a visit to a library to access.
-Mark