I used to work for a company that recorded TV news broadcasts for analysis and reporting (like a kind of “clippings service” for broadcast media). There was a rack of baker’s shelving in an annex near my desk that had cardboard boxes full of videocassettes labeled “9/11”, “9/12” and “9/13”. Instead of wiping and re-using the tapes, as we usually did, someone had set three days of recordings aside, creating an archive of the national reporting on September 11th. It might well have been the only such archive that existed.
The company went out of business a few years ago. I have no idea what happened to the tapes, but I imagine they were probably tossed in a dumpster somewhere. As far as I know, they were never digitized.
