P-T to move into high-rise

The Press-Telegram has sold its downtown Long Beach home of eighty years and will move next summer into a fourteenth-floor newsroom at Arco Center on Ocean Boulevard. The existing newspaper offices on Pine Avenue will be redeveloped into 482 high-rise, so-called loft condos, retaining some of the building's facade. The deal requires the city to create a "loft district" that will allow higher density than has been common in downtown Long Beach. Not making the move will be dozens of file cabinets containing the paper's clipping morgue.

In their place, the newspaper intends to scan microfiche copies of the newspaper to preserve stories. The digitizing process, expected to cost about $250,000, will make back copies of the newspaper more accessible to reporters and researchers, [Publisher Mark] Stevens said.

The newspaper considered moving the clip files, but the move proved to be a logistical and economic challenge.

"To retrofit the floors to support the weight, the cost was prohibitive," he said. "The conversion makes total economic sense."

But perhaps not journalistic and historical sense. I hope they can find a Long Beach library or museum that will take the clipping files instead of throwing them away.