When we started this blog a little while ago we cast an eye on the productivity of ABC's news service by looking at the number of news stories ABC posted to its online News Archive. Our productivity survey pointed to a massive decline in the productivity of ABC News.
The ABC responded by capping the number of stories posted daily to 250. It retrospectively applied this to its online archive effectively wiping easy access to 10,000s stories from 2003 onwards. This effectively undermined our capacity to compile the information. Sadly its also means that past stories are no longer available on line. A glimpse of the number of stories ABC removed can be had by using the "Wayback Machine"and looking through the internet archive. For Friday August 2007, ABC removed around 100 stories!
Screen shot showing ABC's news archive for August 24, 2007 showing 10 pages of storied (25 stories per page)
Screen shot from the internet archive showing ABC previously posted 14 pages. What happened to the missing stories?
We requested further information
at the time but were never provided with a satisfactory response. We have requested this be looked into again.
How petty is ABC NEWS that it would spite the nation by removing an important source of historical information rather than permit an assessment of its declining productivity be measured.
