ALERT! Please Help Us Save the California Digital Newspaper Collection

Evelyn Rose
May 5
5 min read

Image from the California Digital Newspaper Collection.

Did you know that the first issue of the first newspaper ever published in California is available at your fingertips, free of charge? Here it is, published August 15, 1846.

Want to learn more about African American life in San Francisco at the close of the Civil War? See an example here, published June 30, 1865.

How about what happened on any random day in San Francisco history? Check out the Daily Alta California on, say, August 17, 1882.

The histories of the Glen Park district I've been able to rediscover and tell with such detail is in large part because of the availability of the California Digital Newspaper Collection (CDNC). The CDNC contains 1,438,330 issues comprising 21,585,951 pages and 53,614,544 articles.

Until now, the collection has been funded annually by the California State Legislature. Historians in San Francisco and across the state, no matter the location or topic, rely heavily on this digital resource. For many of us, it is our primary go-to repository for uncovering our forgotten histories. It is accessible, searchable, and enables in-depth research with the click of a mouse.

And now, when we have quite suddenly entered an era when our shared American histories are at risk of being rewritten and whitewashed, the value of the CDNC as an essential tool has risen dramatically.

In the past few weeks, we have seen histories of military women and people of color erased from the Pentagon's website. Harriet Tubman, the conductor of the Underground Railroad, was removed from the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom website by the National Park Service (but replaced within 24 hours after an explosive public outcry). The "TQ+" in "LGBTQ+" and all mention of transgender people who played key roles in the Stonewall uprising in New York City have been erased from the NPS website of Stonewall National Monument.

The "unvarnished truth" at the National Museum of African American History & Culture, likewise at the National Museum of the American Indian, the futures of the National Museum of the American Latino and the Smithsonian American Women's History Museum, and the veracity with which our shared stories will be told at the National Museum of American History are all at risk. Quite frankly, it's a frightening time in America and we need to do all we can to document and preserve our recorded histories as they happened.

But now, as if we do not already have enough to contend with, we are facing a new threat. And, it is not from the entity you might expect. In early April, historians across the state were first notified by Brian Geiger, Director of the Center for Bibliographical Studies and Research at University of California, Riverside who manages the CDNC, that funding for the newspaper collection - all $430,000 - had been cut from State of California's fiscal 2025-2026 budget. Without that funding, the CDNC would go offline and the work they do to preserve and digitize issues of as many of California's newspapers as possible would end.

Then, on April 30, 2025, we received a much more concerning update from Director Geiger:

"Unfortunately, the news is worse than I expected. As several of you pointed out in emails to me, the CDNC funding line in the budget for next fiscal year has in fact NOT been removed. It turns out that our funding for the CURRENT fiscal year has been withheld. We are over $300,000 in deficit with only three months left in the fiscal year."

According to an article in The Jewish News of Northern California, Director Geiger was informed belatedly - 6 months into the current fiscal year - that the CDNC had already been DEFUNDED. It appears that lines of communication between the State of California, UC Riverside administrators, and Mr. Geiger catastrophically failed. The CDNC is currently running on a $300,000 deficit that a small reserve fund does not come close to correcting. According to Director Geiger, "If I don’t raise at least $300,000 by June 30, the end of the current fiscal year, we will almost certainly have to cease operations."

Nearly all 50 states have a digital newspaper collection. Why not California, the fifth largest economy in the world? If the CDNC is taken down, approximately 25% of California's historic newspapers will no longer be available in the public domain.

This would be a devastating outcome for every historian, journalist, and newspaper afficionado in the State of California and beyond. And for San Francisco especially so, given how much of our city's documentation was lost in the 1906 Earthquake and Fire. If this critical resource becomes unavailable, how can we learn from our past? From banal day-to-day events to earth-shattering moments in history that provide context to our modern lives? More importantly, how will we be able to save our histories now, at this critical time when journalism and truth-telling are under attack? Our ability to do in-depth research and to tell our histories with the veracity we strive for would be crippled without the CDNC.

And yes, many of these papers are digitized elsewhere (for instance, the San Francisco Chronicle and Examiner through the San Francisco Public Library with a library card, and others by subscription-only at Newspapers.com). But some are only available as unsearchable microfiche, and others digitized at the Chronicling America at the US Library of Congress. But even the latter may not be a sure thing for long. Many newspaper projects across the country, including Chronicling America, receive their funding through the National Endowment of the Arts which, as we have learned in the past few days, is being proposed for major changes (including termination) in the upcoming fiscal year.

We are living in chaotic times. Our democracy is being upended, the world is at risk on many fronts, and there are a growing number of issues that require our attention that we never imagined having to face. Our shared histories are a huge part of what makes us Californians, and Americans. Our histories, as they were recorded in the printed media of the past, are our most important tool for understanding that past and determining how we can save our future.

That's why I'm asking for your help to save the CDNC. Here's what you can do:

Director Geiger has set up a go-fund-me to raise $300,000 through the UC-Riverside Foundation. You can make a donation here.

Write to the Chancellor of UC Riverside, Kim A. Wilcox, to save the CDNC with additional funding here: chancellor@ucr.edu.

Write to the State Assembly and Senate Budget Committees (the latter of which Senator Scott Wiener of San Francisco is Chair) at these contact emails on the web pages of the Assembly Committee on Budget, and the Senate Budget and Fiscal Review Committee.

You can also write to our local State representatives, including Gov. Gavin Newsom, Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, Assemblymember Matt Haney, and separately to Senator Wiener. In case you're in a different district than Glen Park, you can find your local reps here.