How is the media content we make and study being preserved? Is it possible for the internet, a largely uncatalogued, anarchic, ever-expanding archive of the now, to work as a memory site or record office? This paper is concerned with the struggle to store and preserve one threatened kind of media – the newspaper – and its mongrel cousin, the online newspaper. The internet and associated digital technologies mean academic and non-academic researchers have unparalleled access to text-only and full-page versions of local and international contemporary and historic printed newspapers but the same is not true of online. Online newspapers are imperfect but interesting products at the messy frontier of new journalism practice but like many other born digital artefacts, they have fallen into an archival black hole. They are read by millions and collected by no one. Does this matter? If so, why? As newspapers shrink and shut, it is timely to consider the value of journalism as a form of research and writing and the way journalism is used as a source for scholarly work. Copyright 2009 La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.