340 Local News Outlets Now Blocking the Internet Archive (techdirt.com)
- Reference: 0183611972
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/06/05/1910242/340-local-news-outlets-now-blocking-the-internet-archive
- Source link: https://www.techdirt.com/2026/06/05/340-local-news-outlets-now-blocking-the-internet-archive/
> Earlier this year Nieman Lab broke the story that major news publishers, including The New York Times, The Guardian, and USA Today Co., had started blocking the Internet Archive for fear that AI companies might scrape the nonprofit's repositories for training data. As one of the last bastions of archival history, that is, in case you're not aware, not very good for the public interest. Four months later and Nieman Lab now [1]notes that the number of news outlets blocking the archive has [2]soared to around 340 organizations :
>
> "Our new analysis shows that more than 340 local news sites across the United States are now limiting the Internet Archive's ability to access and preserve their stories. Many sites in our sample are owned by five of the seven largest local news publishers in the country: USA Today Co., McClatchy, Advance Local, MediaNews Group, and Tribune Publishing. The latter two are both subsidiaries of the "vulture hedge fund" Alden Global Capital."
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> [...] Regardless of motivation, hiding whatever local news remains behind paywalls, then blocking it from the Internet Archive, in turn makes it harder for everyone else to do real journalism that relies on the historical record, local journalists tell Nieman Lab: "I cover news within a larger news desert in New York's Rockland, Sullivan, and Rockland counties. This means I need to heavily rely on archival data of old news articles from now deceased, or zombie-fied, media outlets," wrote B.J. Mendelson, the editor of [3]The Monroe Gazette newsletter, in one recent [4]petition signed by over 200 journalists. "Without the Internet Archive, my [work] would be incredibly difficult to do."
The Internet Archive says it is listening to the concerns raised by local news outlets, while also partnering with journalism groups to train hundreds of newsrooms on archival preservation: "In December, the Internet Archive partnered with the Poynter Institute and Investigative Reporters and Editors to train a cohort of 33 local and national news outlets on how to develop and implement an archiving strategy. The [5]initiative , funded through a Press Forward grant, aims to train 300 newsrooms in digital preservation and in using the Internet Archive's services by the end of 2027."
[1] https://www.niemanlab.org/2026/05/more-than-340-local-news-outlets-are-limiting-the-internet-archives-access-to-their-journalism/
[2] https://www.techdirt.com/2026/06/05/340-local-news-outlets-now-blocking-the-internet-archive/
[3] https://www.monroegazette.com/
[4] https://www.savethearchive.com/journalists/
[5] https://www.poynter.org/business-work/2025/poynter-ire-and-internet-archive-launch-todays-news-for-tomorrow-a-project-to-help-newsrooms-preserve-their-digital-footprint/
Compromised (Score:1)
The Internet Archive was compromised during their "hack" in 2024:
[1]https://battlepenguin.com/poli... [battlepenguin.com]
There is a ton of stuff already missing. Meanwhile, "reporters" have gone out trying to dox the owner of archive today. Yes, he shouldn't have changed an archived we page in retaliation trying to dox the doxer. That was stupid. Wikipedia immediately started migrating away from archive.is links, but they're also a horribly corrupt propaganda organization as well:
[2]https://battlepenguin.com/poli... [battlepenguin.com]
These "
[1] https://battlepenguin.com/politics/who-archives-the-archivist/
[2] https://battlepenguin.com/politics/wikipedia-is-a-source-of-political-propaganda/
News Space 6/5/2126 (Score:2)
"Little is known about these 'news' organizations today. Their refusal let their content be recorded in the great archive has led to their absence from the historical record. What we do know is they had a predictable uniformity to their content. Often it was composed and distributed from a single source. Many competing sources often had wildly varying 'facts' that often were presented to manipulate a point of view. One thing is certain though. Trump raped kids.
Microfiche is archival. (Score:2)
And digital is not. Most news of this century will simply be forgotten and digitally lost in 20 years.
- those who ignore history..
Rockland AND Rockland!? (Score:1)
This guy must be important
Less to do with AI than with bypassing paywalls (Score:3)
N/T
Everyone knows that you use Archive.org to bypass a paywall.
solve that AND job loss AND who controls AI (Score:2)
Bernie Sanders recognizing that AI is built from *all humanities* collective work (not just these news outlets) proposes an AI sovereign wealth fund
> I will soon be introducing a bill to give the public a 50% ownership stake in the largest AI companies in America. This would guarantee that the trillions created by AI are used to improve the lives of all of us — and block oligarch decisions that harm the American people.
6 min video: [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VN4b4UCWMKI
Archive.org are dicks about what they archive (Score:2)
You can't put anything ephemeral online without these people ignoring any and all "we ask that you do not archive this" signals. The future of the internet is closed behind access controls, not just because of AI: nobody else has any decency left either.
Post war irony. (Score:2)
Ah, the Guardian. The one that's always going on about freedom and e-mailing me for money. Glad they're sticking up for their principles.
Hmm ... (Score:2)
> news publishers ... had started blocking the Internet Archive for fear that AI companies might scrape the nonprofit's repositories for training data.
News publishers argue that no old news will be good news.
Legislate archives? (Score:2)
Perhaps Congress can give the Library of Congress the authority to compel the news sources to archive their output to a system run by the LoC, that escrows it for say... 30 days then makes it public? Also, the archive is immutable and once a story is pushed there it cannot be changed, so they can't be rewriting history.....
I'll bet that isn't the reason (Score:2, Troll)
The real reason is because they don't want any record of their factual inaccuracies.
Stealth (Score:3)
The NYT has a track record of stealth-edits.
[1]https://www.poynter.org/ethics... [poynter.org]
Wiping the archive makes it much more difficult to detect this stuff.
[1] https://www.poynter.org/ethics-trust/2016/public-editor-knocks-nyt-for-stealth-editing-bernie-sanders-story/