We need a Data Journalism Archive. Before it becomes just another 404 error.

[Commentary] Are we about to enter a dark age of data journalism? The Internet has made it possible to see the world’s information without moving a muscle, not matter how old that information is. You can absorb the first news page of the Guardian, from May 1821, which had data journalism at its heart, even then. But data journalism is not part of these archives.

Much of it has become a victim of code rot -- allowed to collapse or degrade so much that as software libraries update or improve, it is left far behind. Now when you try to find examples of this work, as likely as not you will end up at a 404 page. At the same time, for many publishers, every word, no matter how facile or pointless, is saved as if it were a work of studied genius. This is the fantastic thing about archives: They give you a picture of a world from the past, one that can shape how you produce the future. But it’s only the words that are saved. Meanwhile, a map, an interactive guide, or even just a set of interactive charts will vanish as if they never ever existed. It’s time for a Data Journalism Archive. Before we forget everything we know.

[Simon Rogers is a data journalist and has worked at the Guardian, Twitter, and now at Google]