Newspapers and recording the events that become "local history"

Lately, I have been thinking about how neighborhood information will be retained and accessed in the future. The prognosis is not good. If you ever look at the archives of the Washington Post (online at various local libraries) you find an incredible amount of minutiae, but it's those odd little stories, and stories about local businesses, etc., that help us shed light on and suss out and recount the history of the Washington for residents, as opposed to the national story of the "Federal City."

As the metropolitan area has expanded and in some ways overshadowed the importance of the original central city, the Washington Post covers a much greater area, and provides much reduced coverage of any specific area, the various "Extra" editions notwithstanding. In some ways, the details of today will be lost for tomorrow, even in the face of the availability of more information than ever before (i.e., Blogs, community newspapers, the archives of local community groups, etc.). It's not producing the information (and the historical record) that is the problem, it's retaining the information in some publicly accessible manner, for use at some later point.

Click here for the daily Newseum survey of newspaper front pages. And this, for local news from the Washington Post, February 18th, 1890. Or this, from the department of the more things change, the more they remain the same: "PLAINTS AND PROTESTS IGNORED: Citizens of South Washington Appeal to the Authorities in Vain", The Washington Post, January 21, 1896, pg. 8. (With the backfile of the Post online, you can actually search everything--classified and display ads, and articles--and get pdf copies of the item.)

And this, which demonstrates the power of the information search tools we have access to today. Congratulations Elise for making your blog even more useful (and yes it's something I will try to do myself).