The Newsroom

US Woman recorded news bulletins for 33 years

Incredible story made into documentary (May 2019)

This site closed in March 2021 and is now a read-only archive
NL
Ne1L C
Just seen this amazing and very topical story from the BBC:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-us-canada-48190528/marion-stokes-the-woman-who-taped-30-years-of-tv-news

It shows even then how spin and media manipulation was prevalent then.
GI
ginnyfan
Quite fascinating. Good to see her collection will be uploaded online eventually.
LL
London Lite Founding member
https://recorderfilm.com/
ME
mediaman2007
Any chance of the TVS archive being located there?
NL
Ne1L C
I can't see it being released in the cinemas here but I have a sneaking suspicion it will show up on Sky Arts or Sky Atlantic. The only parallel I can come up with is Bob Monkhouse:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykNV4n32KGk
CI
cityprod
I can see it being released, but it'll end up primarily in arthouse cinemas, such as The Poly in Falmouth, and Plymouth Arts Centre. Those will be the kind of cinemas that will show this.
NJ
Neil Jones Founding member
I can't see it being released in the cinemas here but I have a sneaking suspicion it will show up on Sky Arts or Sky Atlantic. The only parallel I can come up with is Bob Monkhouse:


The mentioned lady seems to have primarily recorded the news as she was an activist and civil rights demonstrator during her life and seemed to have formed the impression that nuggets of news were going to go missing if they weren't preserved.

In comparison to Monkhouse, who recorded a wider range of stuff over a longer period of time, TV and radio, some of it going back to the 1960s and as it turned out becoming the only copy of a lot of stuff, plus he cherry-picked things from the schedules to record, it wasn't a "record anything and everything" sort of thing.

The Monkhouse archive IIRC ended up at about 36k tapes. Stokes about 72k but hardly surprising she was recording 24/7 by the time round-the-clock news came round.
EL
elmarko
Bob Monkhouse?
Last edited by elmarko on 8 May 2019 7:18pm
NL
Ne1L C
Bob Monkhouse?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Monkhouse
NL
Ne1L C
I can't see it being released in the cinemas here but I have a sneaking suspicion it will show up on Sky Arts or Sky Atlantic. The only parallel I can come up with is Bob Monkhouse:


The mentioned lady seems to have primarily recorded the news as she was an activist and civil rights demonstrator during her life and seemed to have formed the impression that nuggets of news were going to go missing if they weren't preserved.

In comparison to Monkhouse, who recorded a wider range of stuff over a longer period of time, TV and radio, some of it going back to the 1960s and as it turned out becoming the only copy of a lot of stuff, plus he cherry-picked things from the schedules to record, it wasn't a "record anything and everything" sort of thing.

The Monkhouse archive IIRC ended up at about 36k tapes. Stokes about 72k but hardly surprising she was recording 24/7 by the time round-the-clock news came round.


I agree Monkhouse was a selective archivist in much the same way as the lady in question was. I was drawing the parallel in both what they did albeit in different spheres.
NJ
Neil Jones Founding member
Stokes did her recordings, in her own words, to benefit society.

Monkhouse did it primarily to archive his own work but also because he was obsessive about collecting stuff generally. It was a hobby, there was probably no intent to benefit anybody but him (indeed his court case in the 1970s shoved the hobby firmly underground and it only resurfaced after his death).
LL
London Lite Founding member
I can't see it being released in the cinemas here but I have a sneaking suspicion it will show up on Sky Arts or Sky Atlantic.


PBS America a possibility as well.

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