For some reason, the Wayback Machine, the Internet Archive’ s well-known web snapshotting operation, appears to be enduring a recession of sorts. The project, which relies on web crawlers to catalog changes to a vast number of sites on the web, has been a staple of the internet age, and a key way to conduct research—journalistic or otherwise. Unfortunately, a new report from Niemen Lab claims that the Wayback Machine’s snapshots of news media websites have been “plummeting” in recent months. Indeed, the outlet reports:

Between January 1 and May 15, 2025, the Wayback Machine shows a total of 1.2 million snapshots collected from 100 major news sites’ homepages. Between May 17 and October 1, 2025, it shows 148,628 snapshots from those same 100 sites — a decline of 87%. (You can see our d

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