Lost in the


Online news stories can often disappear. Kieron Monks tracks the missing links


W


armUP95 is among the oldest and largest LGBT+ fan clubs in European football. They follow Fortuna Düsseldorf at home and away, and challenge reactionary thinking in the boardrooms and on the terraces.


I could tell you more, but every trace of the digital-only


article detailing my weekend in Düsseldorf for Metro International newspapers has been scrubbed from the internet. Only a sad and broken URL remains. Neither could I give many details about the predicament of


Palestinian police in parts of the West Bank where they have no jurisdiction. That story has been expunged from the New Statesman website. After more than a decade in journalism, the majority digital, it is safe to say there are many more missing links. I attempted to have the articles restored. A friendly editor


at Metro International passed on my pleas to the website manager, who in turn harassed the company’s outsourced tech workers. One month after my appeal, the article was back online. But then it disappeared again and the friendly editor had moved on. The site was under new management, which soon stopped replying to my emails. The New Statesman was more upfront. My story had been lost along with many others when the company upgraded its website the previous year and more than 20 years of content was ‘migrated’. There was no hope of restoration. A representative advised that I would have been better off writing for print if I wanted my articles to last. The latter point is undoubtedly true. There is a popular misconception that the internet is a permanent repository. But news websites are continuously shedding content, with older pages the most vulnerable. There is no obligation to preserve journalists’ work. When local news and niche sites go out of business, their entire output can be lost. One study by a data company and the Internet Archive


22 | theJournalist


monitored 88 million URLs of news articles. More than one million were dead within a week. News outlets are less than transparent about the articles they are losing – several declined to comment for this article – but a senior manager of one at the world’s most popular news websites shed light on the many causes. Articles can be


Unpublish so you aren’t damned


WHEN an article vanishes from a news website, it is usually the result of technology gremlins. But the easy-come, easy-go nature of web publishing make it tempting to quietly delete embarrassing articles. In 2021, The Telegraph


website published a column lambasting the Duchess of Cambridge for the “rare misstep” of displaying political partisanship by writing a joint article with Jill Biden but not Melania Trump. After a


backlash from


supporters of the royal family, the piece was taken down. The newspaper did not explain why but denied there had been any pressure from the palace. Eagle-eyed observers


noted that two articles deleted by Buzzfeed in 2014 contained criticism of the site’s sponsors, including a feminist critique of a ‘condescending’ Dove advert. Buzzfeed said the article


was removed for being too opinionated, despite the preponderance of opinion in its output. The company had


established a reputation for deletions the previous year


by culling more than 4,000 posts that chief executive Jonah Peretti said did not meet standards. The Washington Post


removed two articles about the Steele dossier concerning Donald Trump’s alleged adventures in Russia, and replaced them with modified versions and an explanatory note. This was commendable to some, but media critics suggested the original stories should have remained as a record. Sometimes deletion is best


for all parties. Young author Jumi Bello posted an emotional essay on Lit Hub explaining why her debut novel was pulled for plagiarism. The piece was swiftly deleted when editors noticed it also contained plagiarism... from the website Plagiarism Today.


cloud


TIM SCRIVENER / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32