Letter to Lee Enterprises:
To Whom It May Concern:
Much has been made of the fact that the Idaho Mountain
Unless, I am clicking on the wrong link, the searchable online archives for the old Wood River Journal are down and have been for several weeks. When I mentioned this to some of my former colleagues at both newspapers, they told me that they thought Lee Enterprises still holds the rights for these online archives. If this is true, I wondered if the old archives are offline, due to a cost-cutting measure; because if so I cannot imagine that keeping these precious archives up would be very expensive. Especially when that cost is measured against the invaluable benefits, such historical records can contribute to communities.
If Lee Enterprises is struggling with this cost, several solutions are at hand, including a fundraiser here, oriented towards newspaper aficionados and local historical buffs. Before I go into further depth with those suggestions, I wanted to do a little homework, to discover if indeed these archives belong to Lee and if so, why they are no longer online.
Brad Hurd, the publisher of the Twin Falls Times-News was kind enough to respond to my letter (which was forwarded to him) saying, "The WRJ archives would have transferred to the buyers, which was the Idaho Falls newspaper group, which in turn sold to the Mountain Express. The current buyers most likely can advise on the status of the archives.
ReplyDeleteGood luck"
Tracey Emery from Lee Enterprises left Brad a message in her forwarded message saying, "The archives would have transferred with their website. It was hosted with TownNews. When they terminated their contract – if they terminated their contract – with TownNews, they would have needed to request their archives. I do not have them"