Dear Reader,
When Hudson River Blue becomes an independent news organization later this week, SB Nation and Vox will transfer our complete archives to us in the form of a data package that we will upload to our new site. The thousands of posts you have read over these past nine years will continue to live on the interwebs at HudsonRiverBlue.com.
Unfortunately, we also learned that comments, images, and FanPosts won’t be included in the transfer because of privacy and copyright considerations.
To be honest, we’re mostly disappointed that the comments won’t survive. We have a small but devoted community of commenters who post thoughtful, impassioned, hilarious responses to the stories we publish, and we’re crushed that those will be lost to history.
We understand the position of SB Nation and Vox, namely that a transfer of those comments will constitute a violation of their privacy agreements, but we wish we could keep them somehow.
For what it’s worth, the new site will have a commenting system that we believe is easier to navigate, and we sincerely hope that typoattack, orangeorange, Col.B, KevinJRogers, and Jamal Crawford’s Shoulder Bandaid will jump back in when the time is right.
Likewise, FanPosts won’t transfer to the new site because of privacy agreements.
As for the loss of images, well, that’s showbiz. We knew that images licensed through USA Today or Getty wouldn’t be transferred, which means that most posts from our first eight years will be archived without photos.
Posts from the last eighteen months won’t be impacted as severely. We now get most of our images from NYCFC or MLS, and as a registered media outlet we will retain the rights to use those images. Although we might need to upload them again, one at a time, which is a superfun way to spend the day.
We’ll discuss the new site more in a later post. For now, I simply want to let you know about the impending loss of comments, images, and FanPosts.
Sincerely,
Oliver Strand
Executive Editor, Hudson River Blue
