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Word from Gannett: Maybe, maybe not to Arizona Historical Society

by on Aug. 07, 2009, under journalism

Proof that being a politician works: Kate Marymont, vice president for news at Gannett Co., Inc., has responded to Arizona State Rep. Daniel Patterson, who gave Gannett a Friday deadline in an email he sent to them Wednesday about the Citizen archives. As noted in my prior posts about this issue, Gannett has roundly ignored calls and e-mails from the Arizona Historical Society about this issue. You can read Marymont’s e-mail below, but her comment about the Arizona Historical Society possibly not being part of the solution is pretty pointed. I wonder if Gannett is planning to build a museum to make the archives accessible to the citizens of Arizona, as Marymont suggests below.

Dear Rep. Patterson:

I appreciate your interest in the preservation of the Tucson Citizen archives. We certainly share that interest.

There are many complex issues involved in this process – issues of ongoing access, facilities, republication rights, digital rights, etc.  Our news, IT, legal and digital teams all are involved.

The Arizona Historical Society may be part of our final solution, or may not.  We don’t have that answer yet.

But please know that the archives will be preserved and in a way that they are accessible to the citizens of Arizona.

As for the timetable, the need for research and analysis will determine that.

I will keep you informed as we work this out.

Thanks for your interest.

Kate Marymont

This entry was posted on Friday, August 7th, 2009 at 12:09 pm and is filed under journalism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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  • ldonyo

    Gannett is, more likely, looking to make as much money as possible off of the sale of the Citizen archives. They have already shown themselves to be heartless money-grubbing worms and that won’t change.

  • http://ArizonaNotebook.com Mike Padgett

    Since Gannett also owns The Arizona Republic, and therefore the archives of its defunct sister paper, The Phoenix Gazette, any chance of public access to the archives of The Gazette, too?
    To update those unaware of The Phoenix Gazette, it began publications in 1881. It was closed in January 1997. Arizona’s history unfolded in The Gazette, as in The Tucson Citizen, during those many years.

  • Carolyn Classen

    At least Gannett’s Kate Marymont finally responded with her promise in writing : “But please know that the archives will be preserved and in a way that they are accessible to the citizens of Arizona.”  It remains to be seen exactly what that preservation entails, with or without AHS.  Good job in reporting this issue Renee.

  • Thomas D.

    Is the Arizona Historical Society the place? Their budget is way down, less staff, less hours of operation. The Citizen should just rent a warehouse and hire some library studies students to run the place.

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