CNN Transcripts in More Than One Place

CNN has been good about archiving their transcripts over the past decade. You can find them, organized by program, at CNN.Com/transcripts.  But for the greater good of historical digital preservation these transcripts, 2000-2012, have been snatched up by the Internet Archive here, as announced by their by their Just In Time Grabs team.  Love this explanation of their initiative:

The hardest part about our transient, shallow world wide web is the terrifying swiftness in which data disappears. To this end, Archive Team members have often bravely strapped on miner's helmets and flashlights, dove into the flaming wreckage of a dying site, and grabbed a copy for all of time. Some of these rescues, consisting of what we could grab, are being saved here.

LexisNexis Academic also carries CNN transcripts but it's tricky telling what years of coverage they provide. They do have transcripts for certain shows going back to the early 90s. You have to go into the Browse Publications section and under transcripts click on the information icon for individual genres--financial, entertainment, international--to see what programs they carry and years of coverage.

NPR Transcripts

As part of National Public Radio's site relaunch in July came a new free-text policy for transcripts. More than 80,000 transcripts are now available going back to May 2005 (they used to charge for them). Observes Susanne Bjorner, writing in The CyberSkeptics Guide to Internet Research (October 2009), "NPR says that transcripts are 'largely accurate' but acknowledges that there may be some spelling or grammatical errors and that, in some cases the text may not align perfectly with the audio" Some random testing on her part "indicates that available transcripts are indexed by every word, making the backfile a major new free source for research in news, business, and culture."

NPR transcripts are also available at LexisNexis (see previous post) but you may want to go straight to the horse's mouth from now on.