Note on "Timelines"

In a dizzying time for news revelations, let's try a new interactive feature to help concentrate and protect primary sources

This site is trying out a new feature: an interactive library where readers can find hard copies of primary source materials at the center of emerging news controversies.

It has become infuriatingly difficult to find the basic information audiences need to make decisions on their own. News institutions like the New York Times, search engines like Google, and “crowdsourced” sites like Wikipedia routinely avoid linking to root documents. A last straw for me was the parade of news stories last week that didn’t direct readers to video or a transcript of J.D. Vance’s speech in Munich.

This morning, I sent out an article titled: “The Library: Timeline of Foreign Censorship Laws.” It’s neither a news article, nor a finished product. It’s simply a chronological list of primary source documents around the theme of foreign speech laws. Twitter Files and/or FOIA documents may appear in these collections.

The idea will be to create similar reference homes for emerging news stories: about USAID contracts, the EPA “gold bars” scandal, court challenges to the Trump administration, whistleblower complaints, declassified information about controversies like Covid, and anything else that comes up.

We’re living through a period of revolutionary change and are awash in revelations and document releases, yet few outlets are making an effort to show core materials. As these stories come out, I’m encouraging readers who work in relevant fields, follow these narratives, or who simply want to pitch in, to write to library@racket.news, especially if they know of documents that should be added.

It’s become clear that no feature that requires the regular participation of my harried self can be counted on to succeed. So, you’ll notice the co-byline of Kathleen McCook, a Distinguished Professor at the School of Information at the University of South Florida, who’s generously volunteered. Kathleen has been instrumental in helping Twitter Files material get a hearing on sites like Wikipedia. She’ll help verify that documents are real and/or complete, and do what she can to try to organize things. We also have a new face or two coming on the editorial side. Please be patient with us. It may take a while to get it right.

An additional, serious problem on the core source front is the rapid disappearance of web-archived material, an issue sometimes called “link rot.” It’s often described a technical or financial problem. I wonder. Even the Wayback Machine, which relies on images instead of links, appears to be enduring odd losses. To get around “link rot,” we’re including hard copies of relevant documents in our lists.

I’m thrilled with Substack and have nothing but love for Chris, Hamish, Jairaj and the rest. It’s a fact, however, that this site was designed for writers like me. It was not designed for reference work. You mostly won’t be receiving emails about document updates. That means you’ll have to use in-site features like “search” to access the relevant topics, or put up with the occasional note from me pointing out major additions to this or that document collection.

I’m not trying to build a new Wikipedia (though Lord knows, we need one). I’m just curious to see if this can work, as a proof of concept. It’s obvious that the digital structures we relied on for decades have been turned against us. Most digital archives focus on exclusion over inclusion. Audiences need to build, for themselves, new structures that will protect information to which they’re entitled, and need to make sense of the world. In the meantime, we try ideas like this, guerrilla-style.

Racket readers are an energetic, knowledgeable bunch. Can we help figure out a solution to the primary sources problem together? Has to be worth a try.