Hook newspaper archive restored...again.
Someone tried to kill it. We're trying to preserve it
As you might recall, an attempt to find out what happened to The Hook newspaper’s online archives was featured in a 2022 Washington Post story, “A newspaper vanished from the internet. Did someone pay to kill it?.” After that story ran, an anonymous benefactor restored the website, but eventually that disappeared as well, along with the anonymous benefactor. Links to Hook stories have always existed on the Internet Archive, though they aren’t searchable and don’t appear in web searches, and so I took the time over the last few months to create a website that links to those archives at hooknewsarhive.com.
Going through the archives I was struck by what we’ve lost in terms of local news coverage. Week after week, the Hook delivered issues packed with local news, often featuring excellent long-form investigative reporting, and provided dynamic arts, music, food, and development coverage. Every cover was a work of art. Headlines were clever. It was funny, too. And tenacious, fearless. Issues of importance were given continuous, in-depth coverage. Boy, did the Hook know how to dig into an issue.
“Aggressive inquisitiveness beyond a daily’s or even a weekly’s normal scope produced unusual facets of the story that went uncovered by other news outlets,” wrote the judges who awarded the Hook the Virginia Press Association’s top honor – the Journalistic Integrity and Community Service Award– for its coverage of the June 2012 ouster and subsequent reinstatement of UVA president Teresa Sullivan. “This includes pursuit of angles that, while risky, opened the aperture for the audience.”
What’s more, the Hook celebrated storytelling. One of the reasons this archive is so compelling is that even in the smallest news story, or report on a city council meeting or a new restaurant opening, brings the history of our community alive. Enjoy!
PS: a special thank you to the DTM’s paid subscribers. For projects like this, your support is most appreciated.
Phenomenal work on this restoration effort. The point about how the Hook's storytelling brought the community alive even in small pieces is something that gets overlooked in discussions about local journalism's decline. I remeber working on a community project years ago and realized how much context those hyper-local archives provided that you just dont get from regional coverage. Preserving these archives isnt just about nostalgia btw, its about maintaining institutional memory that shapes how communities understand themselves.