Rock Hall too concerned with checking boxes

There’s no shortage of criticism about the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Much of that criticism comes from people who like the hall but want to see it change how it chooses artists for induction. I’m in that camp.
Looking at this year’s induction class, I can only think that the voting committee was overly concerned with checking boxes. And in an effort to please everyone, they pleased practically no one.
The performer and musical influence inductees for 2025 include Bad Company, Chubby Checker, Joe Cocker, Cyndi Lauper, Outkast, Salt-N-Pepa, Soundgarden, The White Stripes and Warren Zevon.
The hall also is inducting musicians Thom Bell, Nicky Hopkins and Carol Kaye in the musical excellence category and music industry executive Lenny Waronker in the Ahmet Ertegun Award category.
As I’ve said before, by having one all-encompassing induction ceremony, the hall limits the size of its annual induction class. I’d love to see a two-night blowout with double the number of inductees, just to put a dent in the massive backlog of worthy artists. They could have ceremonies in two locations: Los Angeles and New York City (or maybe Las Vegas and Cleveland).
It would be interesting to be in the papal conclave where the artists are inducted, just to see the process. But based on this year’s induction class, it looks like the voting body is overly focused on balance. Heaven forbid the class is too rock focused or pop focused. And they have to consider diversity in this day and age.
As they’re horse-trading, the voters are checking boxes: classic rock act (Bad Company), more recent rockers (Soundgarden and The White Stripes), outrageous snubs rectified (Chubby Checker. Joe Cocker and Warren Zevon), MTV-era acts (Cyndi Lauper and Salt-N-Pepa) and well-regarded modern act (Outkast).
Unfortunately, to me, nobody stands out as a headliner for this year’s induction class. It might make a great awards ceremony, thanks to guest performers. But overlooked nominees such as Mariah Carey, Billy Idol and Joy Division/New Order would have made for a better show.
That’s my two cents.

Related articles:

Chubby Checker, Joe Cocker, Bad Company, Cyndi Lauper and Outkast get into Rock & Roll Hall of Fame (AP; April 27, 2025)

Rock Hall of Fame Inductees Unveiled: Cyndi Lauper, Outkast, White Stripes, Chubby Checker, Warren Zevon and More to Join Class of 2025 (Variety; April 27, 2025)

The 10 Worst Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Snubs (Ultimate Classic Rock; May 2, 2025)

How hip-hop came to dominate the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame (Axios Cleveland; May 12, 2025)

Flickr shuts down my photo curation website

My offbeat journalistic exercise of reporting on public figures parodied by the adult video industry has run afoul of Flickr’s policies. They’ve suspended my account and blocked everyone except for me from seeing it.
My site documented all the times that porn studios have mocked politicians and celebrities in X-rated movies. It included promotional art and photos from those videos, which I censored when necessary.
But that wasn’t enough for Flickr. In fact, it was all just a money grab. I could keep doing what I was doing as long as I upgraded from a free to a paid account. But I already have a paid Flickr account for family and personal photos and I didn’t want a second one for this side endeavor.
Now, anyone looking to see how many times Donald Trump or Barack Obama has been parodied by the porn industry will get a 404 error page. More dead weblinks in an internet awash in them.
I have downloaded the photos from the “offending” Flickr page and have started uploading them to a new blog on Google’s Blogger service. (See Porn Parodies Of Public Figures.)
I’ve already had to do this several times before. (See links below.)

Related articles:

Tumblr needs to fix its handling of alleged copyright violations (Feb. 1, 2013)

Tumblr terminated my account, killed my three blogs (May 20, 2013)

LFL wardrobe malfunction photos moved to new website (Feb. 20, 2015)

Website attempts to make ‘sports hall of fame directory’

I like websites that specialize on a particular subject and become experts on that area.
That’s not the case with Tech-media-tainment but I have devoted a lot of time to several specific topics such as halls of fame.
I even created a Google map that features 564 (and counting) physical halls of fame that you can visit across sports, music, aviation and other endeavors in North America.
Plus, I have documented more than 180 interesting virtual halls of fame for business and industry, occupations, media and entertainment, food and drink, music, sports and other areas.
I recently came across a website called The Sports Fan Project that is attempting to compile a directory of sports halls of fame.
The Sports Fan Project Hall of Fame Directory is organized by location. It lists a total of 59 U.S. sports halls of fame and museums. Some 24 states and Puerto Rico are covered. It also names 10 international sports halls of fame and museums (in Australia, Canada, England, France, Israel, Japan and Malaysia).
It’s not an exhaustive list, but it covers the major sports pretty well.
However, it includes at least eight halls of fame that don’t have a physical location:

• Eastern States Exposition Equestrian Hall of Fame
• Legends of the Outdoors Hall of Fame
• National Powerboat Hall of Fame
• USA Bobsled & Skeleton Hall of Fame
• USA Curling Hall of Fame
• U.S. Rugby Hall of Fame
• U.S. Squash Hall of Fame
• World Wiffle Ball Championship Hall of Fame.

As someone who has researched halls of fame, it can be difficult to draw the line on which halls to include in a list. If there’s an exhibit of hall of famers within a larger museum, I’ll include it. But I won’t include a hall that just has a physical location for its sponsoring organization. Chances are there’s nothing to see there.
I decided to include college sports halls of fame on my list, but not high school halls of fame. The latter is at best a display case in a school that only students, teachers and parents can visit anyway.
The Sports Fan Project website is edited by lifelong sports fan Doug Hill.

No whites allowed in these halls of fame

As the number of halls of fame has grown, so has the specificity of those halls. In sports, for instance, there are halls of fame for professional leagues, colleges, regions, and even team specific halls.
Another subset of halls of fame are those for black or African Americans.
To date, I have tallied 24 black halls of fame or walks of fame in the U.S., including nine with physical locations that people can visit. The rest are virtual halls that exist only online.
Here’s a summary of those halls.
Let’s start with the nine physical halls or walks of fame for African Americans.

Black College Football Hall of Fame

The Black College Football Hall of Fame honors the greatest football players, coaches and contributors from Historically Black Colleges and Universities.
The Black College Football Hall of Fame is located in the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio.

African American Hall of Fame, Alexandria, Va.

The African American Hall of Fame in Alexandria, Va., tells the story of black residents who have succeeded in education, business, religion, sports, medicine, literature, and politics.
The hall is located in the Charles Houston Recreation Center.

African American Hall of Fame, Peoria, Ill.

The African American Hall of Fame in Peoria, Ill., preserves the history of local black residents and provides educational scholarships for deserving students.
The hall resides within the Peoria Riverfront Museum.

Black Cowboy Hall of Fame

The Black Cowboy Hall of Fame is located at the Black Cowboy Museum in Rosenberg, Texas. The museum preserves the legacy of America’s black cowboys, including Bass Reeves, Nat Love, and Bill Pickett.

National Black Radio Hall of Fame

The National Black Radio Hall of Fame is located in St. Louis, Mo. Artifacts, memorabilia and exhibits are at Harris-Stowe State University.
The hall of fame recognizes the contributions of personalities and pioneers to black radio nationally.

Black Music & Entertainment Walk of Fame

The Black Music & Entertainment Walk of Fame is located in Atlanta, Ga. It honors African Americans, and black people internationally, for their achievements in entertainment.

Cincinnati Black Music Walk of Fame

The Cincinnati Black Music Walk of Fame opened in July 2023 near the Ohio River.
It celebrates the music artists, songwriters, producers, and musicians from Cincinnati, Hamilton County, and Southwest Ohio.

Greater Flint African American Sports Hall of Fame

The Greater Flint African American Sports Hall of Fame preserves the history of African American professional, college, city and high school athletes from the Flint, Mich., area. Exhibits are located at the Flint Public Library.

Texas Black Sports Hall of Fame

The Texas Black Sports Hall of Fame celebrates the contributions African American Texans have made to the history of sports.
It has an exhibit at the African American Museum of Dallas.

Two additional black halls of fame have plans for physical museums.

Louisiana Black History Hall of Fame

The Louisiana Black History Hall of Fame preserves the history of black Americans in the state of Louisiana.
The hall plans to have a permanent home at the Lincoln Theater in Baton Rouge, La. The Lincoln Theater is a historical national landmark that is being renovated to serve as a performing arts theater and museum.

Illinois Black Hall of Fame

The Illinois Black Hall of Fame commemorates the accomplishments of African Americans with Illinois connections.
A physical hall is planned at Governors State University in University Park, Ill.

Now let’s turn to the many virtual halls of fame for black Americans.

African American Golfers Hall of Fame

The African American Golfers Hall of Fame (AAGHOF) is one of two halls of fame devoted to black golfers in the U.S.
The AAGHOF hopes to one day have a physical museum to showcase the history of African Americans playing golf. It is mulling a facility in Riviera Beach, Fla.
The AAGHOF is affiliated with Inner City Youth Golfers and the African American Collegiate & Youth Golfers Hall of Fame.
However, it is not affiliated with the National Black Golf Hall of Fame.

National Black Golf Hall of Fame

The National Black Golf Hall of Fame is based in Atlanta, Ga.
The hall celebrates and honors exemplary achievements of blacks in the golf industry.

National Black College Alumni Hall of Fame

The National Black College Alumni Hall of Fame honors alumni leaders, alumni chapters and national alumni associations who make tremendous contributions to their institutions.
The foundation behind the hall of fame seeks to ensure the “stability, strength and excellence of the nation’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities.”

Black Inventors Hall of Fame

The Black Inventors Hall of Fame is based in Wharton, N.J. It has hosted a number of traveling exhibits showing the contributions of African American inventors.
The hall highlights notable innovations and projects from academia, manufacturing and agriculture to advancements in medicine and the sciences.

Black Authors Hall of Fame

The Black Authors Hall of Fame honors black authors, poets and playwrights.

NAACP Image Award – Hall of Fame Award

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) holds an annual awards ceremony called the NAACP Image Awards. It honors outstanding performances in film, television, theatre, music, and literature by people of color.
Since 1983, the NAACP Image Awards have bestowed its Hall of Fame Award on prestigious people such as Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, Sidney Poitier, Little Richard, and Spike Lee.
In February, the NAACP Image Award – Hall of Fame Award went to the Wayans Family. (See article by People.)

Arkansas Black Hall of Fame

The Arkansas Black Hall of Fame honors accomplished African Americans with Arkansas roots. The foundation behind the hall of fame works to improve the education, health, and social wellbeing of marginalized populations throughout Arkansas.

Greater Cleveland Association of Black Journalists Hall of Fame

The Greater Cleveland Association of Black Journalists announced the inaugural class of inductees into its newly established Hall of Fame on Jan. 18, 2025.
A ceremony honoring the inductees was held on Feb. 22, 2025, at the Cleveland History Center.

There also are three inactive halls of fame for black or African Americans.

Massachusetts Hall of Black Achievement

The Massachusetts Hall of Black Achievement spotlighted the significant contributions of African Americans, Cape Verdeans, and Hispanics of African descent who made significant contributions to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
The yearly HOBA celebration was discontinued after 2011.

Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame

The Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame honored black filmmakers at an annual awards ceremony from 1974 to 1993.
In 2014, its archives were given to the Black Film Center/Archive within the College of Arts and Sciences at Indiana University in Bloomington, Ind.

National Black Sports and Entertainment Hall of Fame

The National Black Sports and Entertainment Hall of Fame inducted its first 24 members, half from sports and half from entertainment, at a ceremony in Harlem, N.Y., in August 2001.
But the effort went silent after that.
(See articles by the New York Times, UPI and Celebrity Access.)

Black Sportswriters Hall of Fame

Three legendary black sportswriters were honored in the inaugural class of the Black Sportswriters Hall of Fame on April 12 in Greensboro, N.C.
The 2025 inductees are William C. Rhoden, Claire Smith and Mike Wilbon.
(See article by Andscape and the Charlotte Observer.)

Updated April 12, 2025.

Sports fan halls of fame for Green Bay Packers, New York Jets

Two professional sports teams now have halls of fame honoring their most dedicated fans.
The Green Bay Packers Fan Hall of Fame was first, starting in 1998. The Packers named the 27th member of its fan hall of fame in February.
The New York Jets Fan Hall of Fame followed in 2017. This year, the team inducted four people, including Grammy Award-winning rapper, music producer and actor Method Man.
If I’ve learned anything about halls of fame in my years of documenting the trend, it’s that those two sports fan halls of fame won’t be the last.
On a related note, sports broadcaster ESPN created the ESPN Fan Hall of Fame in 2012 to celebrate die-hard fans from across sports. But it appears to have gone dormant after its 2014 induction ceremony.

Virtual halls of fame for storm chasing, podcasting and craft beer making

Name a passion, pursuit or profession and there’s going to be a hall of fame for it. In the internet age, these halls of fame can be virtual.
What follows is the latest bunch of virtual halls of fame that I’ve come across.

Storm Chaser Hall of Fame

The National Storm Chasing Hall of Fame (NSCHoF) is a program designed to honor individuals whose work has had a positive and lasting impact on storm chasing.
An inductee to the NSCHoF should have a minimum of 20 years of field experience “unless extenuating circumstances (injury or death) prevail,” the website says.
The inaugural class of the Storm Chaser Hall of Fame was honored during the National Storm Chaser Summit on Feb. 15 in Overland Park, Kansas.

Podcast Hall of Fame

The Podcast Hall of Fame celebrates podcasters who have had mainstream popularity and/or are considered a great podcaster or contributor to the industry by their peers.
Inductees include Adam Carolla, Adam Curry, Marc Maron and more. The first class of inductees was honored in 2015.

American Craft Beer Hall of Fame

The American Craft Beer Hall of Fame inducted its inaugural class on Feb. 15. The inductees came from several facets of the industry – brewery owners, brewers, writers and educators – each having contributed greatly to the growth and development of craft beer.
(See article by Craft Brewing Business.)

Swine Hall of Fame

The Swine Hall of Fame is an annual tradition to celebrate and recognize distinguished leaders in the pork production industry. The inaugural class was inducted in 2023.

Wisconsin Meat Industry Hall of Fame

The Wisconsin Meat Industry Hall of Fame was established to recognize the contributions of individuals who have had a significant impact on the meat industry of Wisconsin.
The Wisconsin Meat Industry Hall of Fame resides at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Meat Science Laboratory.

Government Hall of Fame

Government Executive magazine and website created the Government Hall of Fame to honor individuals who have profoundly shaped the federal government for the betterment of the American people.
Government Executive has been inducting individuals into the Government Hall of Fame since 2019, the publication said.

Geospatial Intelligence Hall of Fame

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) honors persons in its industry with its Geospatial Intelligence Hall of Fame.
The NGA is currently reviewing nominations for its 2025 GEOINT Hall of Fame class, according to a news release.

American Baseball Coaches Association (ABCA) Hall of Fame

The American Baseball Coaches Association has been inducting coaches into its ABCA Hall of Fame since 1966. Since then, more than 350 individuals have been inducted.

U.S. Basketball Writers Association Hall of Fame

The U.S. Basketball Writers Association was founded in 1956 to serve the interests of journalists who cover college basketball. The USBWA Hall of Fame honors members who have made outstanding contributions.
The 2025 class of the U.S. Basketball Writers Association Hall of Fame honored seven reporters and columnists who have covered men’s and women’s basketball, according to a news release.

Country Radio Hall of Fame

Country Radio Broadcasters (CRB), an organization that stages the annual Country Radio Seminar educational event, has been inducting individuals into its Country Radio Hall of Fame since 1975.
It announced its 2025 class of inductees on Feb. 19.

People’s Music Hall of Fame

The Sound Support Foundation and Adam Reader – aka the Professor of Rock, who has built a rock and pop music history channel on YouTube with over 1.2 million subscribers – launched the People’s Music Hall of Fame in February.
The People’s Music Hall of Fame honors musicians who have shaped music throughout the generations and haven’t been recognized yet by the likes of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. The first inductee was Huey Lewis.
(See articles by the Park Record and KSL News Radio.)

WWE Hall of Fame

Professional wrestling entertainment company WWE has been inducting industry greats into the WWE Hall of Fame since 1993.
The 2025 class will be inducted in a ceremony on April 18, 2025, in Las Vegas.

CES 2025 was packed this year. Audit proves it.

If you attended CES 2025 in Las Vegas in early January, then you already know that the annual technology conference was crazy crowded. Now, an independent audit proves it.
The show ran Jan. 7 to 10 after two days of preshow events for journalists. The conference drew 142,465 participants from across the globe, show owner Consumer Technology Association announced Thursday in a press release.
That’s an increase of 2.7% from last year’s CES. But it’s down from the show’s peak of 184,279 in 2017.
CES has been steadily climbing in attendance since the Covid pandemic canceled the 2021 in-person show and shortened the 2022 show.
The Consumer Technology Association is focused on the quality of the show attendees, not the quantity. It noted increases in attendance from senior-level executives, investors and media.
CES 2025 included more than 4,500 exhibitors, up from 4,312 last year. The show floor covered 2.5 million net square of exhibit space, on par with the 2024 show.
CES 2025 also drew 6,582 members of the news media. That’s back above pre-pandemic levels.
CES will return to Las Vegas Jan. 6-9, 2026. The conference is still referred to by many as the Consumer Electronics Show, even though it dropped that name more than 20 years ago. (I can’t find the exact year. Even those vaunted AI chatbots couldn’t help. The show organizer changed its name to the Consumer Technology Association from the Consumer Electronics Association later, in 2015, though.)

Related articles:

CES 2025 news in review: AI, robots, smart glasses, smart rings and more (Jan. 31, 2025)

Celebrities at CES 2025: Anthony Mackie, Karlie Kloss, Sophia Bush, Will.i.am and more (Jan. 25, 2025)

CES 2025: Aye yai yai, AI! (Jan. 25, 2025)

Photo: CES 2025 signage outside the Las Vegas Convention Center. (Patrick Seitz)

Why I unplugged my home landline phone

Every form of electronic communications has been ruined by marketers and scammers.
People today can’t find peace from frequent phone calls, texts and emails from businesses and individuals trying to sell you something or worse, scam you. They interrupt your day, waste your time and annoy you.
This week, I unplugged my home landline phone because of non-stop spam calls.
I looked into blocking the callers from my service, Verizon, but the callers use too many different numbers, probably through spoofing.
Unfortunately the callers are still leaving hang-up voicemails on my service. The voicemails last a couple of seconds before the disconnect. And I have to manually delete them.
My wireless service, AT&T, and my Apple iPhone do a better job of blocking or silencing suspicious unknown callers. But I still get quite a few spam or phishing texts though.
And don’t get me started about email. My two personal email accounts have been clogged with junk email. I have to devote a lot of time to clearing them out occasionally.

Photo: AT&T-branded two-line corded speakerphone. (VTech)

Actresses who have played Snow White in European movies

In my last post, I listed actresses who have played Snow White in U.S. movies and TV series.
Now I’m going to take a look at actresses who have played Snow White in European movies. To a one, they are beautiful women, unlike the recent casting of Rachel Zegler in Disney’s upcoming “Snow White” feature film. (Exhibit 1: See top photo of Italian actress Rossana Podestà in “7 Golden Men” from 1965.) Zegler isn’t ugly, just rather mid.
This list is based on research done by Wikipedia and Internet Movie Database (IMDb).

Actresses who have played Snow White in European movies

• Marianne Simson, “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” aka “Schneewittchen und die sieben Zwerge” (Germany, 1939)
• Rossana Podestà, “The Seven Dwarfs to the Rescue,” aka “I sette nani alla riscossa” (Italy, 1951)
• Raili Mäki, “Snow White and the 7 Dudes,” aka “Lumikki ja 7 jätkää” (Finland, 1953)
• Elke Arendt, “Schneewittchen und die sieben Zwerge” (West Germany, 1955)
• Doris Weikow, “Schneewittchen” (East Germany, 1961)
• Marie Liljedahl, “The New Adventures of Snow White,” aka “Grimm’s Fairy Tales for Adults” (West Germany, 1969)
• Zeynep Degirmencioglu, “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” aka “Pamuk Prenses ve 7 Cüceler” (Turkey, 1971)
• Natalie Minko, “Schneewittchen und das Geheimnis der Zwerge,” aka “Snow White and the Secret of the Dwarves” (Germany, 1992)
• Cosma Shiva Hagen, “7 Dwarves – Men Alone in the Wood” (Germany, 2004) and its sequel “7 Dwarves: The Forest Is Not Enough” (Germany, 2006)
• Nagisa Shirai, “Blanche Neige” (France, 2009)
• Macarena García, “Blancanieves” (Spain, 2012)
• Lou de Laâge, “White as Snow,” aka “Blanche comme neige” (France, 2019)

Photos:

Marianne Simson

Rossana Podestà

Raili Mäki

Elke Arendt

Doris Weikow

Marie Liljedahl

Zeynep Degirmencioglu

Natalie Minko

Cosma Shiva Hagen

Nagisa Shirai

Macarena García

Lou de Laâge

Rachel Zegler joins long list of actresses who have played Snow White

The casting of Rachel Zegler as Snow White in Walt Disney’s upcoming feature film was controversial in part because that movie would have you believe that she’s more attractive than evil queen Gal Gadot. Clearly the magic mirror on the wall is lying or blind.
Zegler is cute but she’s no statuesque beauty like Gadot.
Some say Zegler was a diversity hire for the part because she’s mixed race, half Latina, and not lily white like the German fairy tale. But I don’t think it would have been an issue if Disney had just cast a knockout beauty as Snow White.
By that measure, the most controversial casting as Snow White should have been Camryn Manheim in “The 10th Kingdom” (2000). She’s definitely not a beauty queen.
Zegler joins a long list of actresses who have played Snow White. I’ve put together a list of actresses who have played the character in U.S. movies and TV shows. There’s also been quite a few European productions. In Germany, her character is called Schneewittchen.

Actresses who have played Snow White in U.S. movies and TV shows

• Marguerite Clark, “Snow White” (1916)
• Carol Heiss, “Snow White and the Three Stooges” (1961)
• Elizabeth McGovern, “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” episode (1984) of “Faerie Tale Theatre”
• Sarah Patterson, “Snow White” (1987)
• Monica Keena, “Snow White: A Tale of Terror” (1997)
• Camryn Manheim, “The 10th Kingdom” (2000)
• Kristin Kreuk, “Snow White: The Fairest of Them All” (2001)
• Ginnifer Goodwin, “Once Upon a Time” (2011-2017)
• Kristen Stewart, “Snow White and the Huntsman” (2012)
• Lily Collins, “Mirror Mirror” (2012)
• Eliza Bennett, “Grimm’s Snow White” (2012)
• Shanley Caswell, “Snow White: A Deadly Summer” (2012)
• Stephanie Bennett, “Descendants” (2015)
• Lauren Parkinson, “Avengers Grimm” (2015)
• Jennifer Mischiati, “Snow White’s Christmas Adventure” (2023)
• Rachel Zegler, “Snow White” (2025)

I previously wrote about actresses who have played Snow White back in 2017 and included photos of some of the women. Check out “Actresses who have played Snow White in U.S. movies and TV shows.”

Photos: Rachel Zegler as Snow White (top); poster for Disney’s “Snow White” (2025), scheduled for release on March 21.

Screw ‘netiquette’! Putting weblinks in blog posts is a waste of effort

This weekend, I wasted several hours removing broken weblinks from my articles on Tech-media-tainment. Most of the dead weblinks were originally to news articles. But now they lead to 404 error pages.
It’s always been good netiquette (internet etiquette) to provide links to articles you are discussing. It gives readers additional context and resources to get more information on a subject.
But after my most recent purge of bad weblinks, I’ve decided to limit when I provide them in the future. I’ll provide enough information for readers to do an internet search but not use hypertext coding. That means citing the publication, headline and date of a story, but not a weblink. Over the years too many weblinks become unusable.
Having too many broken links on a website is bad for the user experience and can negatively affect a website’s search ranking. A high number of broken links signals to search engines that your website is not well-maintained, and it can hinder how search engines crawl and index your pages.
My latest search for broken links using BrokenLinkCheck.com flagged 564 bad weblinks.
Some I couldn’t fix because they involved embedded Twitter/X or Instagram posts. A lot of celebrities appear to have deleted their Twitter accounts, for instance.
However, the link checker probably undercounted the number of useless links because many links I manually deleted had automatically redirected to publisher homepages.
The link rot problem was worse on the older blog pages, which makes sense. I’ve been posting to Tech-media-tainment since November 2008.
In some older posts where I had linked to numerous news articles, I had to delete most of the links because they didn’t work anymore.
In some links that did work, the articles were missing media such as photos, slideshows and video.
Some offenders who broke the weblinks on their end included the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), World Health Organization, Creative Commons and the CES trade show.
Repeat offenders among publishers included Bloomberg Businessweek, Entertainment Weekly, Gizmodo, GQ, Mental Floss and The Onion.
Some interesting smaller websites that I had highlighted years ago have been taken over by spam sites or gambling websites. Others just said that their URL was for sale.
I wish the Blogger platform, which Tech-media-tainment uses, would include a built-in broken link checker and a simple way to remove bad weblinks. That sounds like something that artificial intelligence would be great for.
However, as I’ve written previously, Google doesn’t seem interested in investing in Blogger these days.

Related articles:

Online content not safe from deletion (March 4, 2025)

Google has let its Blogger platform wane, but at least it’s still free (March 2, 2025)

Google search algorithm changes hurting small publishers (March 1, 2025)

Content on the internet has an expiration date (Feb. 23, 2025)

The internet is awash in broken links (Oct. 1, 2024)

Photo: ERR 404 license plate in Australia. (Photo via Creative Commons from Flickr user Michael Coghlan.)

Online content not safe from deletion

When I was starting out in the news business and worked at daily newspapers, older articles were available in bound copies of newspaper editions.
Much older articles were saved to microfilm or microfiche. You had to use special machines to read the miniaturized reproductions and to make photocopies.
There was no computer text search so you had to know the date or approximate date of the article or event to find what you needed.
The good news was that there was a permanent record of what had been reported on and written about.
Many journalists, including myself, kept physical “clips” of the articles from the newspapers and print publications that they worked for.
The rise of the internet brought with it the wonders of computer-aided search. All was good until databases like news website archives started going offline. That has led to the scourge of broken weblinks and unavailable information.
Solutions for the problem include archiving organizations such as the venerable Internet Archive. Others include Archive.Today, Archive Team and Webrecorder. But content owners must take advantage of those services.
And those are just Band-Aid fixes to a bigger problem.

Photo: Pew Internet Research chart from Chartr.

Related articles:

How to disappear completely. The internet is forever. But also, it isn’t. What happens to our culture when websites start to vanish at random? (The Verge; Dec. 18, 2024)

The internet is littered with ‘dead links’ (Fast Company; May 28, 2024)

Spotify’s layoffs put an end to a musical encyclopedia, and fans are pissed (TechCrunch; Feb. 12, 2024)

CNET Deletes Thousands of Old Articles to Game Google Search (Gizmodo; Aug. 9, 2023)

Spotify is shutting down Heardle, the Wordle-like music guessing game it bought last year (TechCrunch; April 14, 2023)

Google has let its Blogger platform wane, but at least it’s still free

I started Tech-media-tainment on Google’s Blogger platform at the tail end of the blogging craze in late 2008. Blogger offered the best-available free platform for anyone to create a blog on any subject.
I’m still happy with Blogger after all these years, but it clearly is a low priority for Google now. Google hasn’t changed Blogger much in that time, but it has become less functional over that period. I can’t do things on Blogger that I used to be able to, such as edit a post from that post’s published page or place photos within body text just by putting my cursor where I wanted the photo to go (in the "compose view").
But it still does the job I need it to do and it’s still free. I wouldn’t blog if I had to pay to do it.
In fact, Google used to pay me through an ad-sharing arrangement by having AdSense on Tech-media-tainment. Between 2012 and 2016, I received a check whenever my share of ad revenue topped $100. In all, I received five checks.
But after I wrote a few blog posts looking at the public figures that the porn industry liked to parody in their videos, Tech-media-tainment was de-monetized. My blog didn’t feature actual pornography but the subject matter apparently violated the rules for AdSense. So that relationship ended.
Blogging was still cool when I started Tech-media-tainment but it was soon replaced in the zeitgeist as creators moved to social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and others. Many creators soon became social media influencers.
Back when I started Tech-media-tainment, Blogger used to spotlight interesting blogs on the service. But it ended the Blogs of Note column around 2011.
I’m just happy that Blogger is still operating. It helps to have a wealthy conglomerate like Alphabet backing it. I had previously tried free blogging services GeoCities, Xoom and Soup.io, but they all went out of business. Lots of bloggers moved to WordPress, but that costs money.

Photo: Blogger start page.

Google search algorithm changes hurting small publishers

As Google continues to exert significant control over what web surfers see, publishers big and small have had to become experts in search engine optimization (SEO) to ensure that their content gets discovered and shown. But that’s become a losing battle.
Continual changes to the Google search algorithm have shifted which publishers benefit and which are left out.
Lately I’ve seen a lot of smaller websites complain that recent Google algorithm changes have led to a big drop in traffic to their websites.
Some have called it quits, like entertainment news sites Giant Freakin Robot and Quiet Earth and Apple news website iMore.
Giant Freakin Robot said its internet traffic went from more than 20 million unique visitors a month to just a few thousand a month because of changes to Google search.
“Nearly every independently owned entertainment news publisher is in the same situation, in one way or another,” website founder Joshua Tyler wrote in a Nov. 4 post. “Hundreds of independent publishers have shuttered in the last two years, and thousands more are on the way.”
Another worthwhile entertainment news site that has been negatively impacted by Google’s algorithm changes is The TV Answerman, run by Phillip Swan. The website has lost 90% of its traffic and revenue due to Google’s abrupt and dramatic change to its search algorithms, Swann said in an Oct. 11 blog post.
I understand why Google changes its search algorithm. It wants to weed out bad actors from gaming its search engine. But it doesn’t appear to be working very well. Content from legitimate publishers has been buried and spam content from other sites is being promoted.
Plus, Google is favoring some large publishers because they have legal teams that can fight it or can sign business deals with the search giant.
This is not the open internet we were promised.

Photos: Cover of “Internet: A First Discovery Book” by Scholastic (2000), top;
Poster using the book’s cover as seen in 2008. (Photo by Leslie Lindballe via Creative Commons.)

Content on the internet has an expiration date

It’s been an unfortunate truism that nothing is permanent on the internet. This is a shame for anyone who values information and entertainment on the web.
The examples of disappearing content come regularly. Often websites disappear with nary a peep. Other times content like news articles simply becomes unavailable.
I occasionally try to eliminate the dead weblinks from Tech-media-tainment but it’s a Sisyphean task. It makes me not want to use weblinks on my blog at all.
Since I started Tech-media-tainment in late 2008, I’ve spotlighted more than 400 websites that I’ve found worthwhile. Quite a few of those don’t exist anymore. Some now lead to error pages. Others have been taken over by spam and marketing sites. Others are no longer updated, but at least the data is still there, so that’s good.
My list of favorite websites provides a good testing ground for the life of content on the internet.
Of the first 100 websites I highlighted between November 2008 and October 2011, 36% are no longer reachable.
Of the next 100 websites, 34% are gone. Those websites were spotlighted between October 2011 and February 2014.
Of the subsequent 100 websites, 33% are kaput. Those were publicized between February 2014 and November 2017.
Of the websites I’ve called out since then, 11 have gone bye-bye.
All told, that’s 114 websites, social media accounts and other interesting internet sites that web surfers can no longer visit.

Photo: Expiration date on cream cheese by Flickr user Chris Waits via the Creative Commons.