In the grand scheme of things, I only worked at MTV News Online for a comparatively brief instant -- a mere (barely) two years in the mid-to-late 2000's, but it was easily one of the most informative experiences of my career (albeit, sadly more for what I failed to do than for what I actually accomplished, but that's a weepy saga to be shared over an ill-advised sequence of beers). Those who were reading this blog, at the time, might remember several posts wherein I expressed a good deal of frustration.
This all said, I learned a helluva lot in exceptionally short order and met (and still maintain) an army of incredibly smart, funny, creative and ambitious friends. I only got to write a paltry few pieces myself (one story about -- WAIT FOR IT -- Killing Joke and small news item about The Stranglers), but as of this week, those minor pieces -- and literally countless other amazing stories, features, interviews and video packages lovingly put together by my former colleagues -- have all been completely scrubbed from the website, which -- beyond being frankly fucking horrible, inconsiderate, insensitive and indefensible – is astonishingly short-sighted of Paramount (formerly Viacom). An incredible resource of information has been set on fire and dumped down the chute, presumably as a means of nominal cost-cutting.
It was unclear, last I checked, whether the MTV News archives were deleted/erased or simply made inaccessible to the public, but popular consensus seems to be suggesting the former. If that’s the case, that means that all that work by all those individuals covering myriad subjects spanning whole decades has been obliterated and is now, ostensibly, gone forever. The whole endeavor has basically been negated -- almost as if to suggest that it had never existed. While, again, personally speaking, I was only involved for a comparatively brief hiccup, there are friends and former colleagues of mine for whom this week’s event amounts to all evidence of their entire professional career going up in smoke. Suffice to say, people are enraged.
There seems to be the pervasive notion that things last on the internet in perpetuity, but even with helpful (and reportedly endangered) tools like the Wayback Machine, that’s just not the case. Whether you maintain a ridiculously niche blog (like, say, this one) or have built a stately portfolio of your life’s work online – do yourself a favor right now ... and make yourself hard copies of your work.
You can read more about the deletion of the MTV News archives here.
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