Marion Stokes

Marion Stokes (born Marion Butler, November 25, 1929 – December 14, 2012)[1] was a Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, access television producer, civil rights demonstrator, activist, librarian, and prolific archivist, especially known for single-handedly amassing hundreds of thousands of hours of television news footage spanning 35 years, from 1977 until her death at age 83,[2] at which time she operated nine properties and three storage units.[3]

For the similarly named historical Oregon architect (d. 1975), see Francis Marion Stokes. For the similarly named Austrian painter (d. 1927), see Marianne Stokes.
Marion Stokes
Born
Marion Butler

November 25, 1929 (1929-11-25)
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.
DiedDecember 14, 2012 (2012-12-15) (aged 83)
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.
NationalityAmerican
OccupationTelevision producer, Archivist

Television news collection

Stokes' tape collection consisted of 24/7-coverage of Fox, MSNBC, CNN, C-SPAN, CNBC and other networks—recorded on as many as eight separate VCR machines stationed throughout her house. She had a husband and children, and family outings were planned around the length of a VHS tape. Every six hours when the tapes would be ending, Stokes and her husband would run around the house to switch them out—even cutting short meals at restaurants to make it home to switch out tapes in time. Later in life when she was not as agile, Stokes trained a helper to do the task for her.[4] The archives ultimately grew to live on 71,716 (originally erroneously reported as 140,000 in the media)[5] VHS and Betamax tapes stacked in Stokes' home, as well as apartments she rented just to store them. [2]

She became convinced there was a lot of detail in the news at risk of disappearing forever, and began taping. Her son, Michael Metelits, told WNYC that Stokes "channeled her natural hoarding tendencies to [the] task [of creating an archive]."[3]

Her collection is not the only instance of massive television footage taping, but the care in preserving the collection is very unusual. Known collections of similar scale have not been as well-maintained and lack the timely and local focus.[6]

Other collections

In addition to collecting TV news footage, Stokes personally amassed large quantities of other items. She received half a dozen daily newspapers and 100-150 monthly periodicals,[3] collected for half a century.[4] Stokes had also accumulated 30,000-40,000 books. Metelits told WNYC that in the mid-1970s, they would frequent the bookstore to purchase $800 worth of new books.[3] Stokes also held collections of toys and dollhouses.[7]

Macintosh computers

Stokes bought many Macintosh computers since the brand's inception,[4] along with various other Apple peripherals. At her death, 192 of the computers remained in her possession. Stokes kept the unopened items in a climate-controlled storage garage for posterity. The collection, speculated to be one of the last of its nature remaining, sold on eBay to an anonymous buyer.[8]

Legacy

Stokes bequeathed her son Michael Metelits the entire television collection, with no instructions other than to donate it to a charity of his choice. After a stringent process of considering potential recipients, Metelits gave the collection to The Internet Archive one year after Stokes' death. Four shipping containers were required to move the collection cross-country to Internet Archive's headquarters in San Francisco,[2] a move which cost her estate $16,000.[7] It was the largest collection they had ever received.[9]

The group agreed to digitize the volumes, a process which was expected to run fully on round-the-clock volunteers, costing $2 million and taking 20 digitizing machines several years to complete. As of November 2014, the project was still active.[2]

A documentary about her life, Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project, was directed by Matt Wolf and premiered at the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival.[10][11]

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See also

References
  1. Vernon Clark (December 21, 2012). "Marion Stokes, coproducer of TV show". The Philadelphia Inquirer. Retrieved May 4, 2019.
  2. Morgan Winsor (December 9, 2013). "TV producer's collection of 840,000 hours of news tapes finds a home". CNN. Retrieved August 18, 2014.
  3. PJ Vogt, Alex Goldman (December 12, 2013). "#9 - The Second Life of Marion Stokes". Onthemedia.org (Podcast). WNYC. Retrieved August 22, 2014.
  4. Sarah Kessler (November 21, 2013). "The Incredible Story of Marion Stokes, Who Single-Handedly Taped 35 Years of TV News". Retrieved August 22, 2014.
  5. PJ Vogt (March 26, 2014). "The Internet Archive has Started Uploading 71,716 Videotapes Worth of TV News". Onthemedia.org. Retrieved August 22, 2014.
  6. Macdonald, Roger. "A Dream to Preserve TV News, on the Road to Realization… with Your Help". Internet Archive Blog. Retrieved January 15, 2017.
  7. "Librarian Recorded 800,000 Hours of News Footage Over 35 Years". NBC Philadelphia. December 9, 2013. Retrieved August 22, 2014.
  8. Adam Rosen (March 19, 2014). "Macs in the Box: The Incredible Mac Collection of Marion Stokes. Now For Sale". Cult of Mac. Retrieved August 22, 2014.
  9. Nick Vadala (December 4, 2013). "Germantown's Marion Stokes archived 35 years of TV news". The Philadelphia Inquirer. Retrieved August 22, 2014.
  10. Kalia, Ammar (October 4, 2019). "'Ahead of her time': the woman who recorded the news for 30 years". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved October 4, 2019 – via www.theguardian.com.
  11. "Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project | 2019 Tribeca Film Festival". Tribeca. Retrieved May 8, 2019.
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