MTV deletes news archives from internet, erasing over two decades of articles
If you want your MTV, it just got a lot harder to find.
The archives of MTV News were deleted Monday, removing decades of music journalism from the internet.
The links to mtvnews.com and mtv.com/news began to redirect to MTV's homepage, Variety reported. The links continued to redirect to the home page as of Wednesday evening.
The archives contained work from the news site's founding in 1996 that documented the rise of multiple stars and genres.
The music channel's news operation was shut down in 2023 as a part of a round of layoffs conducted by parent company Paramount. The layoffs cut 25% of jobs from companies owned by Paramount.
CMT (formerly Country Music Television), also owned by Paramount, removed its news archives from its site last week, according to Variety.
USA TODAY reached out to Paramount Global.
Former staff mourn MTV News
Multiple former MTV news staffers took to social media to mourn the loss of their former workplace as others criticized the removal of the collected works.
sickening (derogatory) to see the entire @mtvnews archive wiped from the internet. decades of music history gone...including some very early k-pop stories.
— Crystal Bell (@crystalbell) June 24, 2024
This is disgraceful. They've completely wiped the MTV News archive. Decades of pop culture history research material gone, and why? https://t.co/xJQRXrNERS
— Brian Hiatt (@hiattb) June 24, 2024
So, https://t.co/ypQLdbaWk5 no longer exists. Eight years of my life are gone without a trace. All because it didn't fit some executives' bottom lines. Infuriating is too small a word
— Patrick Hosken (@patrickhosken) June 24, 2024
Brian Hiatt, a writer for Rolling Stone, noted that some earlier articles did not appear with the use of the Wayback Machine.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: MTV News archives deleted; over two decades of articles gone
