MTV News has effectively disappeared from the internet, with over 20 years of music-related interviews and news pulled from the website. Its country music-inspired sister website, CMT.com, seems to have met a similar fate, with both landing pages officially only advertising the latest TV shows.
Variety reports that MTV News shut down last year after 25% of the workforce at Showtime, MTV Entertainment Studios and Paramount Media Networks groups were met with layoffs. While the website had shut down, its two-decade-plus legacy of articles existed as an archive – before today, you could still find an old MTV News article.
The MTV News website launched in 1996, hosting nearly 30 years of music journalism, including its weekly hip-hop column, Mixtape Monday.
MTV News also covered non-music events, such as the 2000 US presidential election, and other social issues like healthcare and gun violence while writing about Kurt Cobain, Salt-N-Pepa, and The Black Crowes.
An internet without an archive? Not a good place to be.
22% Of Australian Music Online Media Sites Disappear In Last 12 Months
In response to the news, MTV News’ former music editor, Patrick Hosken, wrote on X (formerly known as Twitter), “So, http://mtvnews.com 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”.
Adding that he wrote features about Dua Lipa, Linkin Park’s Mike Shinoda, Janelle Monae and many more, Hosken continued, “My experience is not unique. Corporate media is in a bad place. But it genuinely sucks that PR emails don’t use MTV News pullquotes anymore. That freelancers have removed @mtvnews from their bios. I get it, and I’ve done it too. It’s part of the deal. It’s just hard”.
MTV News alum and culture editor at Mashable, Crystal Bell, posted: “sickening (derogatory) to see the entire @mtvnews archive wiped from the internet. decades of music history gone…including some very early k-pop stories.”
Music writer and film/video archiver Claire Shaffer described the decision to remove the MTV News archive from the Internet as “yet another consequence of journalism being viewed as content slop for short-term profits instead of a public good for generations.”
Former Buzzfeed News writer, screenwriter and author Alanna Bennett wrote, “Archives should never disappear. Full-stop. This is what they mean when they say we’re in a digital dark age. There will be no evidence of the incredible cultural journalism that so many people contributed to. If this happens with BuzzFeed News…I STG”.
Some MTV News articles can be found on the archive service Wayback Machine and similar services, but many older stories will be gone for good.
It’s more news that doesn’t bode well for music journalism. Earlier this year, Pitchfork was hit with mass layoffs and merged with GQ.
Back to MTV: last year, MTV’s Australian channels were met with closures, decimating remaining opportunities for Australian artists to get their music videos viewed on TV.
