Happy New Year, reporters! Let’s kick off this new chapter of our lives by looking back at the old one.
First, if you missed our Top 5 Tools of 2017 from last time, check em out.
When I look back at some of my old work, it’s depressing how much of it just flat out isn’t there anymore. This might be due to a tool shutting down, or a website changing, or even a site going offline (RIP Gothamist ☹️).
I’ve found two tools that seem pretty good for preventing this from happening. One you have to pay for, one you do not.
The first, Authory, gives a 25% discount to SPJ members. It preserves a permanent backup of every article you add to your profile, including the full text and screenshots. The downside: the profiles are not super attractive. But still – a backup of both text and screenshots is a good plan.
The second, Save My News, is free and open source and developed by a journalist (Ben Welsh from the LA Times).
Save My News adds your project to the Internet Archive, which, as its name suggests, aims to archive the whole damn Internet.
This is a pretty good solution, assuming, of course, the Internet Archive never gets taken down. The downside is that you don’t get a downloadable copy that you can hold in your cold, paranoid hands.
To be honest, right now I’m going to back up my stuff with Save My News, because it’s free and a perfectly serviceable solution for now. I’ve seen way too many of my old projects turn into 404 pages.
Cheers to an innovative and archivable 2018! 🥂