Tumblr Invaded the New York Times' Underground Morgue

Not far from the paper’s shiny headquarters, the Times still keeps its morgue, the clippings archive that in the olden days was Google before Google, and where now newspaper clippings and photos – actual, physical things – go to die. Or to get resurrected on the Times photo blog, or on the morgue’s Tumblr site, http://livelymorgue.tumblr.com. Tumblr’s pretty new storytelling blog, Storyboard, went down there with a video camera to meet the man who runs it, one Jeffery Roth, who has fought off dust, cockroaches, and the newspaper’s business division. In 2009, the number crunchers tried to sell the 3,300 square-foot space, until Roth staved them off with a forceful letter to a managing editor.

There’s no computer, no Internet, no cell reception, nothing but filing cabinets full of head-spinning serendipitous discoveries (Diane Arbus’s engagement pic, lost photos of Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock, the only known images of the Stonewall Riot’s finale). In the age of digital, the arguments for keeping a place like this can be hard to see, but they’re much easier to touch and smell. Lexi Mainland, the Times social media editor, offers Karp and co. a tip, if they really want to help save print: "If only Tumblrs could have a smell."

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