The Southern Oregon Historical Society is preserving the Medford Mail Tribune’s archives, keeping more than a century of local reporting after the newspaper closed in 2023.
The collection reaches beyond published stories. Research files, reporter correspondence, photographs and an in-house reference library document how journalists covered Southern Oregon and the work behind what readers saw in print.
“It’s really more than the papers,” said Anna Sloan, the society’s curator.
Moving the collection required staff and volunteers to act quickly.
“We basically had 48 hours to figure out how to move all of these materials from their original location to our own facility in downtown Medford,” Sloan said.
They packed and transported dozens of bankers boxes, oversized filing cabinets and thousands of loose and bound newspapers to the former J.C. Penney building in downtown Medford. The collection also includes reference books, photographic negatives and historical memorabilia.
Now, the society faces the slower work of organizing and protecting those materials.
Acidic newsprint can deteriorate quickly. The society is using acid-free storage boxes purchased with an Oregon museum grant to help preserve the newspapers. Staff have filled 16 shelves with stacked archival boxes and set aside an “archives annex” inside the building.
The collection also includes photographic outtakes and printing machinery. The society is negotiating to acquire a 1930s Linotype machine from the era when the Mail Tribune won a Pulitzer Prize in 1934.
Project managers have cataloged 956 boxes of microfilm in an online database, helping researchers identify materials in the collection.
Guest
- Anna Sloan, curator, Southern Oregon Historical Society
