http://www.dailyprogress.com/news/article_5885bff4-e808-5ab6-ad42-fcb60512f9b5.html
http://www.cvilletomorrow.org/news/article/12548-scottsville/
In doing brief research for an upcoming post, I discovered that (sadly) the Charlottesville Tomorrow article displays a snippet and the “Read More” goes to the Daily Progess article, the URL of which is at best a scrambled-alphabet with do decipherable logic whatsoever.
I’m no coder, but I am a firm believer in simplicity and planning for longevity.
I might pay for a subscription if I could be assured that the Daily Progress wouldn’t delete their archives again, as they did in 2008.
Community newspapers provide a true service; they are an archive for the community’s history. Hopefully libraries are archiving the Daily Progress – on microfiche or whatever – so this history won’t be lost.
/rant
Update 18 November 2012: It’s not just the URLs; it’s the entire “new” site that’s changed for the worse. It’s like they have a strategy to drive readers to print.
Also, their (new) RSS feeds are similarly disastrously named.
It’s a type-5 UUID (Universally Unique IDentifier), which is likely computed from the text of the story. In theory, it would be usable as a long-term reference to the story, but will likely be obsoleted the next time they update their content management system.
Wow. Thank you so much for the insight. That is a shame because those URLs in my mind need to be permanent references
—
Please excuse any perceived brevity or curtness. Sent from my iPhone.
RealCentralVA.com
434-242-7140
I have some articles from the Daily Progress that I have scanned in from my mother’s scrapbook from the time when I was growing up in Charlottesville in the 1980s and 1990s. I tried searching to see if there were any digital archives in order to confirm some missing publication dates, but of course there are none that I can find. I really do hope some library in the region (maybe UVa) would take the initiative to scan and digitize the DP archives.
@google-d0c9ecca447094c15c534003aec43c95:disqus The ones from 1892 – 1923 are online … http://cvillenews.com/2013/01/02/progress-archives/ but I agree; hopefully more of their archives are made permanent.