Memory loss

One of the problems I've run into time and again while trying to research my posts is the difficulty finding old articles on the Royal Gazette's website.

Earlier this year, the Royal Gazette took a leaf out of the Bermuda Sun's book and redesigned their site in a way that broke all existing links to their content. That would be bad enough, but they also put in a new search engine that is unable to find any article more than a couple of years old.

The newspapers’ old stories form part of the community’s collective memory. Their loss has made it much harder for ordinary people to get the information they need to hold their government to account. Particularly at election time, when people want to reassess the things the government has done, and the promises made by both political parties, that’s a real loss.

Hopefully the papers will bear this in mind next time they decide to freshen up their sites.