Preserving the Past: Jalawan, Brandenburg

With today’s technology, it could take fewer than 10 years for the newspaper to become extinct.

For journalists seeking old newspapers that have not been published online, microfilm is the best option.

Many public libraries have thousands of canisters of microfilm—photo negatives of  past newspapers. With a machine you can pop in the film of a newspaper from as far back as the 1800s.

“The only way [a 1913 edition of a newspaper] would be available online is if a university put it up, or if a newspaper itself had put up online archives going back that far,” said Alex Watson, a librarian at the University of Mississippi. “But generally speaking with smaller newspapers—those are not going to be available online.”