Today’s edition of SIDEbar is a public service announcement that’s rooted in PR and journalism.

If you’ve been fortunate to land your story, or have a PR agent successfully pitch it to local or national news outlets, know that links to those stories could vanish.

If you’re a creator of anything—print/online, video, audio—you risk the same. With accelerating shifts in media ownership, your work could vanish. Poof.

The Nieman Lab found that more than 340 local outlets, including those owned by some of the world’s biggest corporations, have restricted or removed access to their stories. That’s bad news for journalists, researchers, PR agents and historians doing background work. Those archives held communities’ histories, documented world events and held sources accountable.

It happened to the data-journalism site FiveThirtyEight, previously owned by Disney. Former staff discovered that ABC News had deleted nearly 200,000 hours of their work.

I’ve heard from people during the last year who worry that link rot will ravage their clips. Then what?

Your only hope to find those stories is the Wayback Machine—and maybe crossed fingers 🤞🏼. Or if you’re a public figure, fans may have screenshots, but that’s a topic for another day.

Catalog your clips. You need them for work samples, job applications or maybe a scrapbook for your great-great-great-grands. The bottom line: whenever and wherever your story appears, back it up.

To benefit the greater good, consider posting your links on your website (you still have to keep backups in case of calamity). Keeping those files private does little for people who need that information when it’s no longer easily available.

Like social media platforms when an owner changes algorithms, limits use or drives its users to new loves, anything posted on a third-party website is only yours if you can grab it with a click. Today, that looks different from what it did a few years ago. So back it up, save it in an accessible format and store it somewhere you can always find it. Don’t rely on a corporation you’ve moved on from to hold it for you. There’s only you.

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Good night, Late Show

Thursday marks the end of “The Late Show,” an institution launched by David Letterman on CBS in 1993 to compete with “The Tonight Show.” Letterman handed the baton to Stephen Colbert, who made it his own and more than held his ground in late-night TV. Most of what’s left of the genre has become more political … because it has to be. Who else will call out world instability if not comedians who speak humor to abusive power? It’s their First Amendment right to do it, too.

Every side that deserved to be called out was, yet CBS caved to political intimidation. I don’t buy that cutting Colbert was purely financial because his show kept millions of eyes on the network. He also used it for good, raising more than $2.5 million for World Central Kitchen in addition to creating funds to help people after natural disasters ravaged their communities. Colbert’s “Late Show” was also valuable to the PR machine because he spent many segments talking to authors.

So, Jimmy Kimmel and Seth Meyers remain broadcast voices of reason (as are the Jon Stewarts and John Olivers of the paid media world). Whether politics or entertainment, you don’t have to agree with what they say, but know that they won’t be intimidated. And in a world that’s lost too much traditional journalism, many of us hope that resolve remains. Happy trails, Stephen Colbert. Hope to see you again soon.

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©2026 Gail Sideman; gpublicity.com; SIDEbar

AI DISCLAIMER — SIDEbar is written by a human for humans. I’m a writer and publicist who uses AI to edit. This week, I corrected AI more than the machine corrected me. (I also have words for Google’s search bar WWYT move, but this is intended to be a safe-for-work newsletter that I hope you’ll share. — gs