California Digital Newspaper Collection
No. 8: June 12, 2025
Because a lot of the newspaper research I’ve done (including for my PhD dissertation) relied on the California Digital Newspaper Collection, I was very sorry to hear that the organization had lost their funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). The freely accessible online repository has been a great resource for local and ethnic newspapers published in California during the 20th century.
As of today, a notice is still up on their website:
UC Riverside’s California Digital Newspaper Collection, housed within its Center for Bibliographic Studies, faces not only the potential loss of state funding, but also has recently lost foundation and federal (NEH) funding support.
UC Riverside is actively working on a sustainable model for the collection that will allow its archives to continue to be available to the public.
However, it looks like there’s some good news. Today on Facebook I saw another notice saying “We are currently upgrading the CDNC. The site should be back online soon.”
The site is run by the UC Riverside Center for Bibliographical Studies and Research.
A May 27, 2025 article in the Sacramento Bee outlines why this archive is so important (also in audio form). Here’s an excerpt:
The California Digital Newspaper Collection is an essential piece of California’s democratic infrastructure. For journalists investigating patterns of injustice, students researching family histories and activists understanding the roots of systemic inequality, the digital archive is a lifeline. It allows us to witness how statewide narratives evolve, how communities are represented (or misrepresented) and how power operates through media over time.
This is more than a digital archive; it’s a living record of California’s cultural identity. It tells the stories of Japanese Americans incarcerated during World War II. It traces the rise of California’s labor movement. It amplifies the early voices of LGBTQ+ Californians demanding their rights. And it preserves the vital work of Black newspapers that chronicled civil rights struggles long ignored by mainstream media.
You can help the CDNC by going to their UC Riverside fundraising site and making a donation.
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