Current Events > The woman who taped over 30 years of TV news...

(+) Yeah! (+)

In a storage unit somewhere in Philadelphia, 140,000 VHS tapes sit packed into four shipping containers. Most are hand-labeled with a date between 1977 and 2012, and if you pop one into a VCR you might see scenes from the Iranian Hostage Crisis, the Reagan Administration, or Hurricane Katrina.

Its 35 years of history through the lens of TV news, captured on a dwindling format.

Its also the life work of Marion Stokes, who built an archive of network, local, and cable news, in her home, one tape at a time, recording every major (and trivial) news event until the day she died in 2012 at the age of 83 of lung disease

Stokes was a former librarian who for two years co-produced a local television show with her then-future husband, John Stokes Jr. She also was engaged in civil rights issues, helping organize buses to the 1963 civil rights march on Washington, among other efforts. She began casually recording television in 1977. She taped lots of things, but she thought news was especially important, and when cable transformed it into a 24-hour affair, she began recording MSNBC, Fox, CNN, CNBC, and CSPAN around the clock by running as many as eight television recorders at a time.

Shed feed a six-hour tape into the recorders late at night. Shed wake up early the next day to change them (or conscript family members to do the same if she wasnt home). Shed cut short meals at restaurants to rush home before tapes ended. And when she got too old to keep up, she trained a younger helper named Frank to run the various recording equipment.

But the majority of her days were structured around paying attention to and saving whatever was on the news. Pretty much everything else took a back seat, says her son, Michael Metelits. It provided a certain rhythm to her life, and a certain amount of deep, deep conviction that this stuff was going to be useful. That somehow, someone would find a way to index it, archive it, store itthat it would be useful.

https://www.fastcompany.com/3022022/the-incredible-story-of-marion-stokes-who-single-handedly-taped-35-years-of-tv-news

I once had the idea to to save a newspaper from every day of my life, to be my own time capsule of national and world events. It lasted about three weeks before I realised I needed the space for something else.

I once had the idea to to save a newspaper from every day of my life, to be my own time capsule of national and world events. It lasted about three weeks before I realised I needed the space for something else.

I once had the idea to to save a newspaper from every day of my life, to be my own time capsule of national and world events. It lasted about three weeks before I realised I needed the space for something else.

Yea. My grandpa had a shed behind his house that was full of stacks newspapers. I dont know how long he kept it up but I did look once and saw a paper from during ww2

i honestly wish that networks would have an archive of their live broadcasts available somewhere. radio stations, too. lost media is incredibly depressing to me.

They usually do now.

But in the early days of film and television, yeah, so many treasures lost because people then didn't think they were valuable.

i think they keep them, but i don't think people have much access.

but there's a massive gap in media archival from studios just throwing out everything they couldn't see an immediate use for

Imagine if she had invested that money into a Roth IRA

Poor lady... I guess no one ever told her VHS only last 15 years in normal storage and 25 in sealed temperature controlled environments...

Or that those 6 hour tapes don't last as long...

Maybe she'll get lucky and some rich donar will pay to convert her collection before the entire thing is useless.

I have tapes from the 80s that play fine and the picture looks great.

even since the 60s? that's unfortunate

Poor lady... I guess no one ever told her VHS only last 15 years in normal storage and 25 in sealed temperature controlled environments...

Or that those 6 hour tapes don't last as long...

Seems like it'll be interesting for historical preservation in the future.

I have such intense respect for this person. Like, viscerally. Archival at that level is insane.

Someone needs to hurry and digitize them though.

I believe a team was doing it pre-pandemic but who knows the status of the project now. I just hope the tapes aren't forgotten.

A bunch of old tapes in worn cardboard boxes can easily be presumed garbage and thrown away by someone that needs the warehouse space.

I saved a bunch of 9/11 newspaper. As in the day of.

My teacher said they would be worth a lot someday.

She lied