
A Woman Who Recorded 70k Tapes of American News - respinal
https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2019/11/14/recorder-the-marion-stokes-project
======
marttt
I imagine this would be a treasure trove for an artist like Kenneth Goldsmith
[0]. He has a moving book consisting of verbatim transcriptions of broadcast
shows that were aired during several tragic events in US history [1]. Or
another book (800 pages; yep, I read it through) capturing every word he spoke
during a week [2].

When served well, verbatim transcriptions can make a fascinating or very
emotional form of art. It's like this stuff, with all the stutterings,
illogical sentences etc, is occasionally more directly "wired to my head", and
thus closer to sensing the other person's "thinking", than a regular, careful
literary composition. Then again, it is probably also easier to "overuse", I
guess.

0:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Goldsmith](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Goldsmith)

1: "Seven American Deaths and Disasters" \--
[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16071842-seven-
american-...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16071842-seven-american-
deaths-and-disasters)

2: "Soliloquy" \--
[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/764257.Soliloquy?ac=1&fr...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/764257.Soliloquy?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=LlvKjMzwth&rank=1)

~~~
WalterBright
I've often wondered how people actually spoke in the 1800's. I'm sure there
was a lot of cussing going on, but none of that made it into print.

It's like WW2 movies made in the 1950s. Actual GIs didn't talk like that.

------
eutropia
We should be very protective of this archive, those that produce the news want
it to be extremely compelling and convincing for the narrative they're
writing, but instantly forgotten in time for the next crisis. The patterns
that will emerge from this will be damning, and I suspect that efforts will be
taken to ensure those patterns remain forgotten.

~~~
IIAOPSW
If by "efforts to ensure those patterns remain forgotten" you mean "do
literally nothing because the public has the attention span of a goldfish"
then yes.

The people buying and consuming the news are as guilty as the people making
and selling it. The modern state of affairs exists by ambivalent forces
present in any large population. It did not need to be engineered by any elite
cabal, and it does not perpetuate merely because people are ignorant of what's
in the archives.

------
atentaten
It would be great if the audio could be transcribed and the text ran through
some ML models that could analyze attributes over time, like:

sentiment, new use of words (ideas & technologies), the varying viewpoints for
the same story, correlations between when something was first announced to
later outcomes, etc.

From this it would be possible to show in a compelling way how the hearts and
minds of the masses are shaped by the media they consume.

~~~
Synaesthesia
> From this it would be possible to show in a compelling way how the hearts
> and minds of the masses are shaped by the media they consume.

This is already well understood, and has been a conscious science since at
least the turn of the century. See Edward Bernays, and Manufacturing Consent

~~~
mistermann
_Well_ understood?

I wonder what the outcome would be of such analysis, I bet it would be
interesting!

~~~
Synaesthesia
It’s been validated countless times, basically the media, being large
corporations themselves, favour power and are against certain ideas, which are
never mentioned. It’s evident all over. For example if you read FAIR you will
see many examples of this.

~~~
mistermann
Oh, I very much agree with you, but my point is, how do you measure such
things? It's not like you can just get out a ruler.

An archive like this could offer incredible insight into the development of
modern culture.

~~~
Synaesthesia
Chomsky actually did measure things by looking at how many times certain
stories were reported across all major news agencies. But yes you can’t
“measure” it.

It would be a very valuable trove, I look forward to seeing the documentary
about it.

------
pmoriarty
The saddest part of the story:

 _" At the time Stokes began recording, television stations had been deleting
archives for decades"_

For-profit corporations can not be trusted to archive history.

~~~
roywiggins
Government bureaucracy isn't noticably better. _Everyone_ was writing over
their tape archives back then, including the BBC (see: Doctor Who lost
episodes) and, uh, NASA (the moon landings).

~~~
pmoriarty
Governments might not be perfect, but they have a far, far better track record
than for-profit corporations. The Library of Congress is one prominent example
of archiving excellence. Many other public libraries and archives offer other
examples.

~~~
caseysoftware
I used to work on the Digital Archives at the Library of Congress.

It's not that they're exceptionally better at it. In fact, the Library has
warehouses of materials that they still haven't cataloged, let alone organized
or (better) digitized. Their primary focus has been the "sexy" projects like
spool recordings, wax cylinders, etc that make for cool stories and mitigate
decay (aka destruction) over modern material.

The big problem is that of collection. While in theory, anything that is a
registered copyright in the US should be on file, most people don't take the
time to register, let alone send off a copy.

The Library & National Archives aren't "better" at it.. it's that it's their
primary purpose so the fact that they do it puts it above most other groups.

~~~
dredmorbius
What I find telling of the US National Archives is that the unit of measurment
for the collections (particularly the uncatalogued backlog) is millions of
cubic feet.

[https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2008/summer/b...](https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2008/summer/backlog.html)

------
sxv
"That material truly doesn't exist anywhere."

Technically, doesn't the data exist as radiowaves traveling at lightspeed away
from their broadcast source on earth?

~~~
chrismcb
Sure... Now go grab it.

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toomuchtodo
> her recordings, which have been acquired by the Internet Archive in
> Richmond, California

Thank you Internet Archive!

------
chiffre01
Any word on the internet archive's progress on this?

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jc__denton
This reminds me of the (I believe) NYT article on the woman whose husband
recorded tens of thousands of wrestling matches on VHS tapes. The archive was
sought after by fans of the sport, but since the man's passing - the wife has
struggled to maintain the collection and was contemplating tossing it.

~~~
PappaPatat
Boxing it is.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/22/nyregion/boxing-vhs-
archi...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/22/nyregion/boxing-vhs-archive.html)

------
hombre_fatal
I really like how this website implemented their companion audio player. It
was a smart touch to have play/pause on any play-button on the page animate
some sort of ghost effect to bring your attention to the player in the corner.

It's a clean, well-done, fast site in general. Not something I expect from a
radio station.

~~~
eropple
WBUR is more than just a radio station. They're an NPR affiliate--which is to
say they're a web news organization as well--and they do a lot of pretty in-
depth reporting.

I don't listen to the radio in the car too often anymore, but it's never left
90.9 FM since I bought the car.

------
ajna91
"To make the film, Wolf developed a complex system to index and identify the
70,000 tapes, which were all six to eight hours long.

In the end, he only digitized 100 of the tapes and says those 700 hours are “a
tiny scratch into the surface of what's there.”"

Wow, what a treasure trove!

------
mr__y
I really hope that all those archives will be digitized and available for
download.

~~~
mtalantikite
The collection was donated to the Internet Archive, but I’m not sure the
status of its digitization:

[https://blog.archive.org/2019/05/24/71716-video-](https://blog.archive.org/2019/05/24/71716-video-)

~~~
VonGuard
What has been digitized is fully text searchable!

------
cowmix
What sparked Ms Stokes interest in recording the news happens to coincide with
my news awakening. The hostage crisis and Love Canal (which started when I was
around seven or eight) jump started my new obsession.

------
topynate
Anyone who doesn't like hearing very loud flyback transformer whine should
avoid playing the last few seconds of the embedded video.

I think what Stokes did in recording those tapes was outstanding, by the way.

------
dang
Anybody want to dig up links to the older threads about this? I can't just
now...

~~~
kencausey
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19855291](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19855291)

~~~
dang
Thanks! This is the one that has the comments.

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purplezooey
_" At the time Stokes began recording, television stations had been deleting
archives for decades, Wolf says."_

wtf.. stations delete their own footage? wouldn't you want to just hang on to
everything indefinitely?

~~~
dragonwriter
> wouldn't you want to just hang on to everything indefinitely?

Maintaining archives isn't free and has very little expected future value in
many cases, so, no, in a for-profit business you probably wouldn't want to.

------
dredmorbius
See also: the Vanderbilt Television News Archive.

[https://tvnews.vanderbilt.edu](https://tvnews.vanderbilt.edu)

------
natas
Will this documentary be downloadable or released on DVD? I'd like to buy it.

~~~
casefields
It’s got a couple more months of screenings. I’m sure after that you’ll be
able to.

------
nmstoker
Something of a side point, but I'm curious about how expensive this was for
her to do.

In the 80s / 90s wouldn't a blank 3hr video be something like $5 or so (I'm
guessing, as I recollect it was about £5 or so, and am expecting they'd be
cheaper in the US as most things seemed to be then)

Given that 70k hrs would be around 23k 3hr cassettes, that would work out at
maybe $115k. Seems a lot for an ex-Communist organiser to have ready to spend
on a project like this (much as it has plenty of merit).

~~~
xeromal
It's not a high upfront cost though. Most people are decent at shelling out
5-15$ a week.

------
HNLurker2
Next: a man who recorded 10 years of hacker news links

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Sushi-san
This has been posted on HN before.

~~~
Aloha
without searching, at least three times that I can think of. It's still
interesting

------
sys_64738
Isn't this copyright infringement? I think there's a fair use for recording
and keeping for a period but recording everything for 30 years isn't that.

~~~
snowwrestler
Recording to tape was the subject of a Supreme Court case, the result of which
was to make it explicitly legal for consumers to use VCRs to record broadcast
TV.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Corp._of_America_v._Uni...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Corp._of_America_v._Universal_City_Studios,_Inc).

