From the bookmarks… The Importance of Being Permanent is a guest post by Simon Waldman on the Press Think blog from Jay Rosen.
What makes great news organizations great is not simply the work they do on a given day, but the accumulated quality of work done over weeks, months and years.
The hardest part of everything living forever, though, is the difficulty in understanding how today’s story will be used in the future. How much is each story worth as part of the thread in time? The short answer is: no one knows. The longer answer is: if it’s not available indefinitely, you’ll never find out.
I think about this at work, and – less often – I think about this here, where I write these words for myself and a few others, most of whom are known to me. Most of what I write is of interest only to me… I think of it as a hedge against my lost brain cells. But I also believe that only by plugging away day after day is anything great accomplished, and it’s refreshing to have a record, however incomplete, of what sparked the fingers to life on that day and place in time.