WCPT 820 Interview: Tracy Baim

Scott and Ellen are joined by Tracy Baim, co-founder and owner of Windy City Times. She talked about “Windy City Times @40: Breaking News. Breaking Silence," a new exhibit that opens May 30 at Gerber/Hart Library and Archives. The exhibit features digitized archives from the 1980s, including never-before-seen photos from events like the 1987 March on Washington and an AIDS research benefit at the Chicago Theatre. 

Baim highlighted the importance of preserving physical archives and announced that a planned 40th anniversary party on September 25 will allow people "to actually be able to own their own history." She explained that "various ticket levels will come with a hard drive with these digitized archives on them because we want to disseminate our history in ways that they can't shut it down from the internet. The campaign is going to be called Own Your History."

Baim said the organizers "want to show that these artifacts are actually so relevant today," allowing people to "use them for research, to use them for fun, [and] look at their grandparents!"

She added: "I actually find that some of the younger people that freelance and write for us, as well as the people I meet when I speak at high schools and colleges, are hungry for this information, to give a sense of history. And not only that, they really appreciate the physicality of newspapers in a way that's almost like albums, vinyl. I hear from a lot of my twentysomething friends and colleagues that they actually have a really great appreciation for these media, so they're not necessarily collecting newspapers in physical form, but they like to see them digitized the way that they were curated back then, with all the ads and the photos and everything together." 

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