8 ms·

Tom Tryniski digitized nearly 50M pages of newspapers in his living room

326 points by dzdt 8y ago

ilamont 8y ago
Tom T., I salute you. For the past 10+ years, I have used hundreds of scans in your archive to learn about my roots in small farming villages and factory towns in northern and western New York. Thank you for not selling out to Ancestry.com or Newspapers.com and keeping this resource free. His devotion to old newspaper archives leads me to ask: How could vital records and other paper archives at the municipal level be digitized and indexed? What are the technical and legal considerations for such a project?
- justin66 8y ago
  > How could vital records and other paper archives at the municipal level be digitized and indexed? The typical business model is for a company to digitize the ones somebody might want to look at someday and offer online access. > What are the technical and legal considerations for such a project? Legal: more than can be articulated here, but the FCRA is sort of the big one that covers much more than you'd think. Technical: buy a scanner or two.
  - peterburkimsher 8y ago
    Please can you elaborate more about the legal aspects? I've scanned a lot of Chinese-language material (especially bilingual English/Chinese and dialects) and found some new Unicode characters that way. I'm reluctant to share it online because I'm scared about copyright.
    - bumholio 8y ago
      The original copyright is with the paper for anything published after the second world war (the exact date depends on the country). They have the sole right to decide how and when their archives are published online. Determining copyright status is non-trivial, here is an example for some US periodicals: http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/cce/firstperiod.html http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/cce/firstperiod.html That being said, the paper have usually long since went under and the copyrights will never be asserted. In the extremely unlikely case they will be (for example, if the paper is still in circulation), a free online archive with no advertisements falls squarely under fair use, given the immense historical value of old papers and their nil current commercial value.
      - peterburkimsher 8y ago
        "nil current commercial value" can't be right. "He has, on occasion, been approached by companies looking to partner with him or purchase licenses to his archives. He’s turned them all down, including one offer for half a million dollars. “I knew [my collection] would ultimately be charged for,” Tryniski says nonchalantly, explaining why he declined the offer—for most people, an enormous sum of money. “I really didn’t like the idea of charging a guy to use my site, and then for them to take the biggest profit." I assume the operation used a Russian server because of the copyright issue.
  - ilamont 8y ago
    In terms of scanners, are there models that can handle odd-sized books and ledgers, many in fragile condition? This is where many old vital records and documents reside. Another issue for indexing: 18th, 19th and early 20th century handwriting styles. Many clerks had good handwriting, but with lots of variation in style, written over printed templates (marriage certificates, property and tax records, etc). How good are modern OCR technologies recognizing variations in handwriting?
    - superhuzza 8y ago
      1. If documents are odd sized, or fragile, cameras usually the best choice for digitization. Doesn't have to touch the pages, software can handle differently sized formats etc. 2. OCR still isn't even 100% accurate for printed text. Handwritten text accuracy is worse. Cursive is even less accurate.
    - justin66 8y ago
      There are a few different levels of digitization here if you're talking about something like a county clerk or a state office or something. You can digitize the documents with OCR (or by hand) and process them with a level of precision great enough that you can archive or destroy the original documents and just print out a new document when you need it. One example would be the states that no longer issue a "real" birth certificate and just print one out on official letterhead when there is a demand. You can index the documents and stuff them in the basement, which is pretty much the default for many county records. The computer is basically equivalent to a card catalog in that case. The database might very well be a scanned card catalog... You can make a nice, pretty, OCR-enabled picture of the original document and store it on a database. Searchability can vary. Things like signatures and cursive writing will often just need to be interpreted by a human during the process of digitization. If such records aren't important enough to justify a few minutes of someone's time, they might not ever be digitized. There's a lot of variance here. A state agency like a Department of Motor Vehicles has a strong motivation to make things more efficient and the advantage that none of the records are really ancient. A county clerk in a poor, rural county has completely different resources and needs.
  - userbinator 8y ago
    Actually, I think cameras are the preferred method for digitisation now --- they've gotten much better in terms of resolution, and have always been many times faster.
    - vinceguidry 8y ago
      Dropbox has a document scanner that has completely obliterated the anxiety I get over whether I should keep a particular document or not. If it doesn't need to be physically presented anywhere, it can be scanned and tossed, and Dropbox offers a convenient, perfectly adequate solution to do that. Documents that do need physical presentation can always be reacquired, but there's only a handful of those, easy to put them all in an envelope and stow 'em.
      - toomuchtodo 8y ago
        Yes! Dropbox really nailed this. I keep hoping it’s a feature iOS ends up implementing natively in the camera app with the ability to save to iCloud Files.
    - crispyambulance 8y ago
      That's interesting. I guess it would happen eventually. I knew that a while back drum scanners were the ultimate for scanning large documents/artworks. I wonder if now they're doing image stitching with cameras?
      - Kadin 8y ago
        You can certainly do image stitching with camera images. From the software's perspective it's no different than putting together a panorama, really. (There are some minor differences, since the camera is not being panned from a static position, but they are not big.) Drum scanners were always the ne plus ultra when it came to scanning film, particularly large format film like 4x5 negatives. But as CMOS sensors have gotten better, the advantage has diminished (the design of drum scanners was driven by PMTs and later, linear CCDs), and I don't know if even 4x5 format photographers are bothering anymore. They are a real pain to work with, especially the ones that required a "wet mount" of the negative. Historical negatives were never a good match for them. It's nice that the advancements in the consumer market have made it much easier for archivists doing copy stand work.
orliesaurus 8y ago
Looks like we need more capeless heroes like Tom Tryniski!
dzdt 8y ago
Its amazing that an individual, working just with their own time and money in their own house, is so outpacing efforts like that of the Library of Congress.
- Swizec 8y ago
  No meetings and decision commitees.
  - pjc50 8y ago
    No accountability. Nobody's going to come and ask criticise how he spent their grant money, why he chose this paper over another, etc. Distrust of the public sector leads to excessive accountability requirements that often take up a large fraction of the project cost, maybe even more than half.
- skookumchuck 8y ago
  Not amazing at all. Those bureaucracies spent their time planning, budgeting, arguing, doing studies, etc., while Tom Tryniski just puts the microfilm in the scanner and scans it.
  - Lucent 8y ago
    That's a neat soundbite, but it's committees, planning, arguing, and meetings that got us the protocols underpinning an open internet that are holding up decades later. Not to discount his work, but wouldn't it be great if he sat down with some people who argued for the best format to store and deliver it?
    - skookumchuck 8y ago
      I talked to a museum archivist about this once. She was obsessed with getting the best scans possible with the best equipment and budget. So no scans at all were done.
      - 8y ago
skookumchuck 8y ago
He reminds me of the woman who obsessively taped local TV news broadcasts for decades, and wound up with the only surviving record of those shows. Truly an invaluable service both of them did and are doing.
- pronoiac 8y ago
  Ah, yes, Marion Stokes: https://kernelmag.dailydot.com/issue-sections/features-issue-sections/16582/vhs-internet-archive-news/ https://kernelmag.dailydot.com/issue-sections/features-issue... Wikipedia reports she left 71,716 VHS tapes of news recordings. The Internet Archive is on it.
  - voltagex_ 8y ago
    This is a good time to remind everyone to donate to the Archive: https://archive.org/donate/ https://archive.org/donate/
known 8y ago
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." --George Bernard Shaw
jay-anderson 8y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVWDX6oaYCg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVWDX6oaYCg - here's an older video about him. Pretty interesting. We need more home archivists (or whatever the proper word is) like him. There's so much stuff out there that would be interesting to search through.
- roboyoshi 8y ago
  > We need more home archivists We are out there on r/DataHoarder, and on some obscure trackers like Myspleen. I hope that when I'm older I can preserve some history stuff as well for the greater good.
akudha 8y ago
There is something awe inspiring about people who spend long times doing something they love without expecting much in return, for public good. These are the projects that need to be supported so they are able to do it as long as they physically can. Huge respect for not selling. Anyone know of more examples?
- noonespecial 8y ago
  I share this sentiment wholeheartedly. The power of single minded dedication is humbling. This type of act adds wealth to the human experience far beyond what the "corporate" model can deliver. I hate to pull politics into stuff like this but I always thought one of the massive unforeseen benefits of a basic minimum income would be an explosion of these types of "labors of love".
  - kennxfl 8y ago
    That's would be horrible for innovation. People want to feel that they could make millions of dollars creating something but instead turn the money away. That choice is very important.
    - roblabla 8y ago
      I don't understand how that is incompatible with basic income? Basic income isn't going to give you millions of dollars...
      - kennxfl 8y ago
        Basic income discourages levels those at the top with more taxation in order to ensure a level base for everyone else. And it also encourages the citizens in the middle to get a little less aggressive in the workplace market. Based on primal human instincts alone, those that strive to outwork everybody are less likely to do so if it means that they are not getting compensated equally for their effort.
        8y ago
rmason 8y ago
What Mr. Tryniski has done is more than admirable. But unfortunately he has failed in one aspect and that has to be as a leader. When he dies whatever number of pages have been archived all efforts will cease. If he had volunteer helpers and a foundation he could will money to help them keep it going.
- iopuy 8y ago
  This guy digitizes over 50M pages for the greater good and you're calling him a failure?
  - theoh 8y ago
    "... in one respect"
dehef 8y ago
Not being ironic, I really like his website. Brutalism amateurs should take a look http://fultonhistory.com/ http://fultonhistory.com/ That is the perfect example (on desktop), no regard for the design, still perfectly functional (including back button etc..). Edit: just noticed the use of jAlbum for the gallery. Just adding +1 to nostalgia :)
- vanderZwan 8y ago
  Oh wow, thank you for pointing that out! You can barely see it because the internet is too fast these days, but after you click a link it says "A wise decision!" EDIT: His donation page is here: http://fultonhistory.com/Donation%20paypal.html http://fultonhistory.com/Donation%20paypal.html
- adrianN 8y ago
  Renders as a blank page with a color changing square in the lower right corner for me. Very minimalist.
- bni 8y ago
  Wants me to install something called flash, no thanks
  - culot 8y ago
    Flash isn't necessary to use the site. It seems to be used for a PDF display portion of the archive search's split-pane view. The search results are displayed fine without Flash.
- swah 8y ago
  I like it too. Reminds me of a similar ("not-ironic") site here in Brazil: https://www.ccdb.gea.nom.br/ https://www.ccdb.gea.nom.br/ This guy serves tens of thousands of pages of his master piece book called Gea, and even makes his own bizarre old style renderings and animations to go with it. A recent rendering of his muse, Ky: https://www.ccdb.gea.nom.br/ky_2019_altissima_resolucao_2758x3840.html https://www.ccdb.gea.nom.br/ky_2019_altissima_resolucao_2758...
- 8y ago
vanderZwan 8y ago
> Tryniski has no formal training in archiving and isn’t particularly interested in working with any of the various other online newspaper directories, especially those with regimented archival requirements. He has, on occasion, been approached by companies looking to partner with him or purchase licenses to his archives. He’s turned them all down, including one offer for half a million dollars. I do hope his material is free to be stored on Archive.org at least? Or perhaps even his entire website. It would be terrible if this resource would disappear
- Kadin 8y ago
  Yeah, that was sort of my reaction as well. It's great that the guy is doing what he's doing, and I respect his desire not to sell to some vampire-squid monetizer who will paywall all of it for revenue maximization, but ... what's his backup strategy? What's his estate plan? Does whoever is going to inherit his house know that there's more to that giant pile of hard drives, besides a task to be farmed out to 1-800-GOT-JUNK? I am concerned that this entire effort is one sloppy-street-crossing or one house fire away from being gone forever.
hycaria 8y ago
Am I the only one who feels that the author's withering rant about Tryniski opinions, and her blabber about free press is an undelicate and unneeded addition only to push some agenda ? Like, is it really the point of his project ? Are his views expressed anywhere in his archives ? Why be so judgmental ?!
- kennethh 8y ago
  I totally agree. There is no doubt the reporter is a Clinton supporter and it almost seems like she have problems believing a good guy like this can support Trump. The article really shows off Tom as a guy who has his beliefs but also dare to hear other people with different opinions.
- pmyteh 8y ago
  The CJR is a journal about the press; its writers' opinion that a free press is vital is nailed on. I don't read it as trying to push an agenda (which I suspect the author believes is shared by her readers) but to explore the tensions between America's tradition of a viciously partisan press and its 20th Century ethic of studied neutrality, and of tensions between the press as abstract apple-pie-and-motherhood and distrust of actual publications (the archivist's selection of Fox over other media, and the observation that even in their heyday there was commercial pressure for small town press not to do investigative reporting). If you find arguments about the state of the press distasteful I can see why you wouldn't like the last section. But I found it quite interesting.
- andyjohnson0 8y ago
  Tryniski supports Trump, who regularly describes journalists as public enemies. And at the same time he spends a a lot of time working on the material produced by journalism. I'd say that's an interesting contradiction, and exploring it added colour to what would otherwise have been a dry article about microfilm scanning. Some years ago I did a course on magazine journalism. You get taught to look for the human angle when writing a piece, and to find a "hook" for your article that relates it to current events. This was just a journalist doing that.
- Spooky23 8y ago
mhb 8y ago
Somewhat related: Nicholson Baker didn't expect librarians to act like barbarians - but then he learned they were destroying or dumping millions of books and newspapers. He tells Oliver Burkeman why he had to take a stand. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17644080 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17644080

326 points by dzdt 8y ago

Tom T., I salute you. For the past 10+ years, I have used hundreds of scans in your archive to learn about my roots in small farming villages and factory towns in northern and western New York. Thank you for not selling out to Ancestry.com or Newspapers.com and keeping this resource free. His devotion to old newspaper archives leads me to ask: How could vital records and other paper archives at the municipal level be digitized and indexed? What are the technical and legal considerations for such a project?

justin66 8y ago
> How could vital records and other paper archives at the municipal level be digitized and indexed? The typical business model is for a company to digitize the ones somebody might want to look at someday and offer online access. > What are the technical and legal considerations for such a project? Legal: more than can be articulated here, but the FCRA is sort of the big one that covers much more than you'd think. Technical: buy a scanner or two.
- peterburkimsher 8y ago
  Please can you elaborate more about the legal aspects? I've scanned a lot of Chinese-language material (especially bilingual English/Chinese and dialects) and found some new Unicode characters that way. I'm reluctant to share it online because I'm scared about copyright.
  - bumholio 8y ago
    The original copyright is with the paper for anything published after the second world war (the exact date depends on the country). They have the sole right to decide how and when their archives are published online. Determining copyright status is non-trivial, here is an example for some US periodicals: http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/cce/firstperiod.html http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/cce/firstperiod.html That being said, the paper have usually long since went under and the copyrights will never be asserted. In the extremely unlikely case they will be (for example, if the paper is still in circulation), a free online archive with no advertisements falls squarely under fair use, given the immense historical value of old papers and their nil current commercial value.
    - peterburkimsher 8y ago
      "nil current commercial value" can't be right. "He has, on occasion, been approached by companies looking to partner with him or purchase licenses to his archives. He’s turned them all down, including one offer for half a million dollars. “I knew [my collection] would ultimately be charged for,” Tryniski says nonchalantly, explaining why he declined the offer—for most people, an enormous sum of money. “I really didn’t like the idea of charging a guy to use my site, and then for them to take the biggest profit." I assume the operation used a Russian server because of the copyright issue.
- ilamont 8y ago
  In terms of scanners, are there models that can handle odd-sized books and ledgers, many in fragile condition? This is where many old vital records and documents reside. Another issue for indexing: 18th, 19th and early 20th century handwriting styles. Many clerks had good handwriting, but with lots of variation in style, written over printed templates (marriage certificates, property and tax records, etc). How good are modern OCR technologies recognizing variations in handwriting?
  - superhuzza 8y ago
    1. If documents are odd sized, or fragile, cameras usually the best choice for digitization. Doesn't have to touch the pages, software can handle differently sized formats etc. 2. OCR still isn't even 100% accurate for printed text. Handwritten text accuracy is worse. Cursive is even less accurate.
  - justin66 8y ago
    There are a few different levels of digitization here if you're talking about something like a county clerk or a state office or something. You can digitize the documents with OCR (or by hand) and process them with a level of precision great enough that you can archive or destroy the original documents and just print out a new document when you need it. One example would be the states that no longer issue a "real" birth certificate and just print one out on official letterhead when there is a demand. You can index the documents and stuff them in the basement, which is pretty much the default for many county records. The computer is basically equivalent to a card catalog in that case. The database might very well be a scanned card catalog... You can make a nice, pretty, OCR-enabled picture of the original document and store it on a database. Searchability can vary. Things like signatures and cursive writing will often just need to be interpreted by a human during the process of digitization. If such records aren't important enough to justify a few minutes of someone's time, they might not ever be digitized. There's a lot of variance here. A state agency like a Department of Motor Vehicles has a strong motivation to make things more efficient and the advantage that none of the records are really ancient. A county clerk in a poor, rural county has completely different resources and needs.
- userbinator 8y ago
  Actually, I think cameras are the preferred method for digitisation now --- they've gotten much better in terms of resolution, and have always been many times faster.
  - vinceguidry 8y ago
    Dropbox has a document scanner that has completely obliterated the anxiety I get over whether I should keep a particular document or not. If it doesn't need to be physically presented anywhere, it can be scanned and tossed, and Dropbox offers a convenient, perfectly adequate solution to do that. Documents that do need physical presentation can always be reacquired, but there's only a handful of those, easy to put them all in an envelope and stow 'em.
    - toomuchtodo 8y ago
      Yes! Dropbox really nailed this. I keep hoping it’s a feature iOS ends up implementing natively in the camera app with the ability to save to iCloud Files.
  - crispyambulance 8y ago
    That's interesting. I guess it would happen eventually. I knew that a while back drum scanners were the ultimate for scanning large documents/artworks. I wonder if now they're doing image stitching with cameras?
    - Kadin 8y ago
      You can certainly do image stitching with camera images. From the software's perspective it's no different than putting together a panorama, really. (There are some minor differences, since the camera is not being panned from a static position, but they are not big.) Drum scanners were always the ne plus ultra when it came to scanning film, particularly large format film like 4x5 negatives. But as CMOS sensors have gotten better, the advantage has diminished (the design of drum scanners was driven by PMTs and later, linear CCDs), and I don't know if even 4x5 format photographers are bothering anymore. They are a real pain to work with, especially the ones that required a "wet mount" of the negative. Historical negatives were never a good match for them. It's nice that the advancements in the consumer market have made it much easier for archivists doing copy stand work.

orliesaurus 8y ago

Looks like we need more capeless heroes like Tom Tryniski!

dzdt 8y ago

Its amazing that an individual, working just with their own time and money in their own house, is so outpacing efforts like that of the Library of Congress.

Swizec 8y ago
No meetings and decision commitees.
- pjc50 8y ago
  No accountability. Nobody's going to come and ask criticise how he spent their grant money, why he chose this paper over another, etc. Distrust of the public sector leads to excessive accountability requirements that often take up a large fraction of the project cost, maybe even more than half.
skookumchuck 8y ago
Not amazing at all. Those bureaucracies spent their time planning, budgeting, arguing, doing studies, etc., while Tom Tryniski just puts the microfilm in the scanner and scans it.
- Lucent 8y ago
  That's a neat soundbite, but it's committees, planning, arguing, and meetings that got us the protocols underpinning an open internet that are holding up decades later. Not to discount his work, but wouldn't it be great if he sat down with some people who argued for the best format to store and deliver it?
  - skookumchuck 8y ago
    I talked to a museum archivist about this once. She was obsessed with getting the best scans possible with the best equipment and budget. So no scans at all were done.
    - 8y ago

skookumchuck 8y ago

He reminds me of the woman who obsessively taped local TV news broadcasts for decades, and wound up with the only surviving record of those shows. Truly an invaluable service both of them did and are doing.

pronoiac 8y ago
Ah, yes, Marion Stokes: https://kernelmag.dailydot.com/issue-sections/features-issue-sections/16582/vhs-internet-archive-news/ https://kernelmag.dailydot.com/issue-sections/features-issue... Wikipedia reports she left 71,716 VHS tapes of news recordings. The Internet Archive is on it.
- voltagex_ 8y ago
  This is a good time to remind everyone to donate to the Archive: https://archive.org/donate/ https://archive.org/donate/

known 8y ago

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." --George Bernard Shaw

jay-anderson 8y ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVWDX6oaYCg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVWDX6oaYCg - here's an older video about him. Pretty interesting. We need more home archivists (or whatever the proper word is) like him. There's so much stuff out there that would be interesting to search through.

roboyoshi 8y ago
> We need more home archivists We are out there on r/DataHoarder, and on some obscure trackers like Myspleen. I hope that when I'm older I can preserve some history stuff as well for the greater good.

akudha 8y ago

There is something awe inspiring about people who spend long times doing something they love without expecting much in return, for public good. These are the projects that need to be supported so they are able to do it as long as they physically can. Huge respect for not selling. Anyone know of more examples?

noonespecial 8y ago
I share this sentiment wholeheartedly. The power of single minded dedication is humbling. This type of act adds wealth to the human experience far beyond what the "corporate" model can deliver. I hate to pull politics into stuff like this but I always thought one of the massive unforeseen benefits of a basic minimum income would be an explosion of these types of "labors of love".
- kennxfl 8y ago
  That's would be horrible for innovation. People want to feel that they could make millions of dollars creating something but instead turn the money away. That choice is very important.
  - roblabla 8y ago
    I don't understand how that is incompatible with basic income? Basic income isn't going to give you millions of dollars...
    - kennxfl 8y ago
      Basic income discourages levels those at the top with more taxation in order to ensure a level base for everyone else. And it also encourages the citizens in the middle to get a little less aggressive in the workplace market. Based on primal human instincts alone, those that strive to outwork everybody are less likely to do so if it means that they are not getting compensated equally for their effort.
      - 8y ago

rmason 8y ago

What Mr. Tryniski has done is more than admirable. But unfortunately he has failed in one aspect and that has to be as a leader. When he dies whatever number of pages have been archived all efforts will cease. If he had volunteer helpers and a foundation he could will money to help them keep it going.

iopuy 8y ago
This guy digitizes over 50M pages for the greater good and you're calling him a failure?
- theoh 8y ago
  "... in one respect"

dehef 8y ago

Not being ironic, I really like his website. Brutalism amateurs should take a look http://fultonhistory.com/ http://fultonhistory.com/ That is the perfect example (on desktop), no regard for the design, still perfectly functional (including back button etc..). Edit: just noticed the use of jAlbum for the gallery. Just adding +1 to nostalgia :)

vanderZwan 8y ago
Oh wow, thank you for pointing that out! You can barely see it because the internet is too fast these days, but after you click a link it says "A wise decision!" EDIT: His donation page is here: http://fultonhistory.com/Donation%20paypal.html http://fultonhistory.com/Donation%20paypal.html
adrianN 8y ago
Renders as a blank page with a color changing square in the lower right corner for me. Very minimalist.
bni 8y ago
Wants me to install something called flash, no thanks
- culot 8y ago
  Flash isn't necessary to use the site. It seems to be used for a PDF display portion of the archive search's split-pane view. The search results are displayed fine without Flash.
swah 8y ago
I like it too. Reminds me of a similar ("not-ironic") site here in Brazil: https://www.ccdb.gea.nom.br/ https://www.ccdb.gea.nom.br/ This guy serves tens of thousands of pages of his master piece book called Gea, and even makes his own bizarre old style renderings and animations to go with it. A recent rendering of his muse, Ky: https://www.ccdb.gea.nom.br/ky_2019_altissima_resolucao_2758x3840.html https://www.ccdb.gea.nom.br/ky_2019_altissima_resolucao_2758...
8y ago

vanderZwan 8y ago

> Tryniski has no formal training in archiving and isn’t particularly interested in working with any of the various other online newspaper directories, especially those with regimented archival requirements. He has, on occasion, been approached by companies looking to partner with him or purchase licenses to his archives. He’s turned them all down, including one offer for half a million dollars. I do hope his material is free to be stored on Archive.org at least? Or perhaps even his entire website. It would be terrible if this resource would disappear

Kadin 8y ago
Yeah, that was sort of my reaction as well. It's great that the guy is doing what he's doing, and I respect his desire not to sell to some vampire-squid monetizer who will paywall all of it for revenue maximization, but ... what's his backup strategy? What's his estate plan? Does whoever is going to inherit his house know that there's more to that giant pile of hard drives, besides a task to be farmed out to 1-800-GOT-JUNK? I am concerned that this entire effort is one sloppy-street-crossing or one house fire away from being gone forever.

hycaria 8y ago

Am I the only one who feels that the author's withering rant about Tryniski opinions, and her blabber about free press is an undelicate and unneeded addition only to push some agenda ? Like, is it really the point of his project ? Are his views expressed anywhere in his archives ? Why be so judgmental ?!

kennethh 8y ago
I totally agree. There is no doubt the reporter is a Clinton supporter and it almost seems like she have problems believing a good guy like this can support Trump. The article really shows off Tom as a guy who has his beliefs but also dare to hear other people with different opinions.
pmyteh 8y ago
The CJR is a journal about the press; its writers' opinion that a free press is vital is nailed on. I don't read it as trying to push an agenda (which I suspect the author believes is shared by her readers) but to explore the tensions between America's tradition of a viciously partisan press and its 20th Century ethic of studied neutrality, and of tensions between the press as abstract apple-pie-and-motherhood and distrust of actual publications (the archivist's selection of Fox over other media, and the observation that even in their heyday there was commercial pressure for small town press not to do investigative reporting). If you find arguments about the state of the press distasteful I can see why you wouldn't like the last section. But I found it quite interesting.
andyjohnson0 8y ago
Tryniski supports Trump, who regularly describes journalists as public enemies. And at the same time he spends a a lot of time working on the material produced by journalism. I'd say that's an interesting contradiction, and exploring it added colour to what would otherwise have been a dry article about microfilm scanning. Some years ago I did a course on magazine journalism. You get taught to look for the human angle when writing a piece, and to find a "hook" for your article that relates it to current events. This was just a journalist doing that.
Spooky23 8y ago

mhb 8y ago

Somewhat related: Nicholson Baker didn't expect librarians to act like barbarians - but then he learned they were destroying or dumping millions of books and newspapers. He tells Oliver Burkeman why he had to take a stand. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17644080 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17644080